Snowed In
by secretmonkey
Summary: When a massive storm hits Purgatory, Waverly and Nicole find themselves stuck in the homestead, cut off from the rest of town. Some fluff, some hints of romance, some angst and Waverly dealing with her issues. (Waverly, Nicole)
1. Chapter 1

They call it the White Witch (because _of course_ they do) and Waverly hates it.

It, a _storm_ , comes to bury them that winter, a cold and blustery bitch of a thing. It swirls down on them from out of the hills, picking up steam and snow from the Barrens, bringing the kind of cold you feel _inside_ your bones, like something dying inside you and no amount of blankets and heaters and hot chocolate can make you feel like you'll _ever_ be warm again.

"When I was little," she says, "Willa and Wynonna, they'd build these giant forts out of every pillow and every blanket we had. " She smiles at the memory, happy (at least a _little_ ) that even with everything going on, with revenants and skin walkers and the discovery of Eveilla ( _whoever_ she is) she can still enjoy her memories. "They'd stack them _so_ high," she says, "so high I couldn't even touch _close_ to the top, let alone reach the peak."

Waverly burrows down into the cocoon over her bed, the half dozen blankets and (at last count) seven pillows and ( _best_ of all) Nicole's arms and she shivers.

She's not entirely sure _that's_ from the cold.

Nicole was just supposed to be dropping by, just checking in on her after her wounding, just the polite deputy doing her duty. And then there were kisses and some talk about more kisses and then there _were_ more kisses and by the time _those_ were done, the Witch had settled in and Waverly realized they had better do the same.

It looked to be a long ride.

The WItch only comes once every few years. "You've gotta watch out for it," she tells Nicole, tucking her feet under the other woman's legs. "If there's an extra warm summer or overly… lively… fall, the Witch is gonna be coming."

They'd had both this last year and Waverly _hadn't_ paid much attention, not with Bobo and company breathing down their necks and the matter of the undead (but not in the _vampire_ way) gunslinger living in their barn. She'd been caught unawares, the twenty five degree drop in temperature and the sky as white as a blank page greeting her two mornings ago and she'd cursed under her breath.

She should have known.

She was the one who had stayed, she was the one who'd called Purgatory home for all those years while Wynonna… _didn't_ … and she was the one who remembered everything else that _everyone_ else tried to forget.

"My daddy used to say it was Mother Nature's way of making a reckoning," Waverly says and she's _unbelievably_ proud that she gets the words out and that they're _clear_ , given that her mind is anything _but_ , not with the way Nicole's fingers are dancing along the bare skin of her back, just under the hem of her Shorty's sweatshirt. "The trees were like gunslingers," she says. "Too old and too proud and too stupid to know when to quit."

"Not unlike a certain family," Nicole says, the words rushing against Waverly's cheek, her breath hot against Waverly's skin, and the youngest Earp thinks she might have to reconsider that whole never feeling warm again thing.

She nods and smiles and burrows closer, her head coming to rest against Nicole's chest, the deputy's arms tightening around her. "The Witch," she says, "well… she would come through to do her duty, to usher them all off, to remind them that nothing liv…" She trails off, realizing that _that_ part of her daddy's story just wasn't _right_. "That nothing is _supposed_ to live forever."

Technically, Waverly knows that nothing really _does_ , not unless you count Doc and she's not sure _he_ counts since he can still die and since without the Stone Witch (no relation to the White one, she's sure) ( _maybe_ ) even Doc would be _long_ dead, so she's not really sure if he breaks the rule or if he's the exception that proves it and…

 _And_ , it's really _really_ hard to think with Nicole's hand doing _that_ , drawing those circles over and over and _over_ against her skin and with the sound of her heartbeat echoing in Waverly's ear and Wave wonders - not for the first time - what the hell is so wrong with her that she spends _so_ much time focused on the dead, when there's _living_ right _here_.

She snuggles closer, scooting just a little so that Nicole's hand trails upward, tugging the sweatshirt with it, exposing more of Waverly's skin (cold, _what_ cold?) and she shivers again, but it's more of a shudder and this time she _knows_ it's got nothing to do with the storm.

They stay that way, huddled together for warmth (maybe not _just_ for warmth) as the wind whips outside and the lights flicker and Waverly knows that somewhere - somewhere _out there_ \- Bobo and his minions and who the fuck knows _what_ else, are massing and planning and plotting and she's got _no_ idea where Wynonna and Dolls and Doc are and cell reception is already nearly gone and it's clear already - even without all _that_ \- that this year's Witch is going to put all the rest of them to shame.

She knows it's not going to end well.

But right then and right there, as Nicole's hand slides across her bare back and their legs tangle together under the mass of blankets and her heart rattles round in her chest like the chains on the Ghost of Christmas Past?

Waverly's never felt quite so safe.

It won't last. It _never_ does.

But it's good enough for now.

* * *

The call comes at four am, right about the same time Nicole watches the wind take down the tiny fence in the corner of the yard and the sound of it startles the hell out of her, since neither of them had a signal all night.

It's a miracle.

Except four am phone calls _anywhere_ , much less in _Purgatory_ , are almost never miracles and Nicole stares down at the phone and there's an icy feeling in her heart that's got nothing to do with the Witch.

It's Waverly's phone that rings but Waverly is asleep, wrapped in about six layers of plush fabric and yes, Nicole knows a call from Wynonna is probably important and Waverly would probably want to get it.

But those are just assumptions and Nicole's a cop and she knows the dangers of assumptions and yeah, that's really just a whole _shitload_ of rationalization. But it took Waverly close to three hours to fall asleep and another hour- _plus_ before she stopped talking ( _crying_ ) ( _worrying_ ) (fucking _panicking_ ) in her sleep and whatever it is Wynonna wants…

There's not much they can do. Not from here. And they certainly can't go out _there_ , not with the way the temperature keeps slipping and the wind keeps whipping and it's been close to an hour since the last time she could even _see_ her truck and it's parked like fifteen feet from the window.

Rationalization or not, Nicole knows one simple truth. Wherever Wynonna is (probably with Dolls and Henry)? She's in the same boat they are.

On their own.

That's nothing new for Nicole. She's been on her own since she was eighteen, since the moment she left home and struck out to make a life, to make something out of her time here that wasn't working in the family store (her sister Lindsay) or going to college to learn how to _run_ the family store (her brother Derek), since the moment she stumbled on Purgatory and Nedley and his need for a deputy that wasn't a drunk or an idiot or _both_.

She fit the bill and she was 'easy on the eyes' as he told the Mayor and she got the job without much debate and she's been here ever since.

"I _like_ it here," she told him once and she really does and she knows - oh so well - that _alone_ should have made him question her judgement, but she thinks he understood, maybe more than anyone else would.

It takes a certain kind of crazy to live in Purgatory and another kind to _like_ it and when you find someone like _that_?

Best bet is to keep them on your side, cause _surviving_ here takes all the crazy you can get.

Nicole figures that maybe that explains why she can't stop trying to get Wynonna and Dolls to let her in on it, whatever _it_ is, you know keeping the crazy close and all. And maybe she's still on the outside - though a bit less since… _Jack_ \- but she's still starting to feel like one of the gang, a little, maybe, and not quite as on her own as she once was.

And, of course, there's _Waverly_ and yeah, they're not exactly official (sometimes Nicole feels like Waverly's a Black Badge division unto herself) and no one else knows about them, she _thinks_ , but she sorta kinda maybe _likes_ that.

 _She's_ not on _her_ own. _They_ are.

The phone rings again - _Y_ popping up on the called ID - and Nicole flips the phone over and over in her hand, tossing one quick glance back toward the bedroom. She won't wake Waverly, she doesn't care _what_ Wynonna threatens her with (and she _knows_ there will be threats), but at the same time, she doesn't want Wynonna worrying, either.

Nicole's not entirely sure - though she's got a few _ideas_ \- what it is, exactly, Wynonna and Dolls are into, but she knows enough to know that worrying about Waverly is a distraction Wynonna can ill afford.

She swipes the screen to accept the call before she can talk herself out of it. "Hello?" she says, and there's nothing on the other end, not at first. Nicole says 'hello' again and then again and then, faintly, she can make out the sound of… something… clinking? Like the sound of….

Glasses.

And then there's voices, almost as faint as the glasses and she can't understand, can't make out any of the _words_ but she _can_ hear the drawl, the southern fucking charm soaking the details she can't quite hear and then something like laughter and more clinking and that drawl again.

She's been butt dialed.

Wynonna Earp, Black Badge Deputy and savior of Purgatory (one of those… ideas… Nicole's got) is… _somewhere_ … drinking and laughing and riding out the storm with Henry and probably Dolls and butt dialing her sister at four in the fucking morning.

And maybe it _is_ a miracle.

"Nicole?"

Waverly's voice - one Nicole can hear _perfectly_ \- rings out in the other room and the deputy instinctively reaches for her gun, still in its holster on the kitchen counter, mentally running through the list of everything that could be wrong, of everything (and it's all _things_ , another of those ideas) that could be there, could be hurting her, could be -

"Nicole, come back to bed. I'm cold."

She pauses, in the middle of the Earp homestead kitchen (such as it is), one hand holding the phone, the other going for her gun and, not for the first time, Nicole wonders exactly when _this_ became her life.

And as she presses end on the call that wasn't and leaves her gun right where it is, not needing either of _them_ to keep Waverly warm, Nicole realizes.

She's got _no_ idea when this happened.

But she's so _very_ glad it did.


	2. Chapter 2

It's noon by the time Waverly wakes up.

Or, really, it _could_ be. It could be nine am or it could be five in the evening or it could be - though it isn't _likely_ \- the next day. She can't really tell cause she can't find her phone and the power is out ( _again_ ) and so the tiny clock radio she keeps next to her bed is useless.

She told Wynonna they should have gotten the ones with the battery back up. "In case the power goes out," she said, "in case we're stranded in the dark and not sure what time it is and yes, I _know_ the other one is five bucks cheaper and yes, I _know_ Black Badge doesn't pay for shit and yes, I _know_ you've got enough battery powered… _things_ … in your bedroom, _but_ …"

Waverly did know. Oh, how she _knew_.

The homestead was safe and the homestead was protected and the homestead was _home_ , but fuck all were the walls _thin_.

She rolls from the bed, careful not to wake Nicole and _that_ … well… Waverly can't help smiling like a fool at _that_ , at knowing that there's someone in her bed she cares enough not to wake and that that someone is someone she actively _wants_ to be there. _That's_ new, not like it was with Champ and if Waverly had a nickel for every time she'd thought _that_ over the last few weeks, she probably could have doubled Bobo's offer and bought Shorty's herself.

Her hands find the hem of Nicole's PPD sweatshirt, tugging it down past her hips, and Waverly's not exactly sure when _she_ ended up wearing _that_ (not that she's complaining) and lets her mind wander for just a moment, lets herself picture that little dream of domesticity. Her running the bar, Nicole waiting for Nedley to die so she can become Sheriff, nothing worse than the occasional bar brawl or a drunk and disorderly for either of them to worry about.

No revenants, no witches (save for the White one), no back from the dead gunslingers (or, you know, _sisters_ ), no heirs, no badges, no danger. She'd be just another girl, working in a bar and wearing far too little clothing at work and then coming home to learn all about how wearing too little clothing in front of the _right_ person can be _so_ much more fun than wearing nothing at all in front of the _wrong_ one.

It's a nice dream. Nice and normal and... well... _so_ not ever going to happen and Waverly shakes her head and hops off the bed. She's spent too much time, wasted too many years of her life trying to be normal and she's not going to do it anymore. She's going to embrace who she is, she's going to dive headfirst into her _actual_ life and not the one she's fashioned for everyone else to see and she's going to stop wishing for what can't be.

You know… right after she figures out what the hell time it is.

* * *

Waverly parts the blinds with two fingers and stares outside, watching the Witch work her spells.

It's daylight, she can _sorta_ tell that, mostly cause the dark of night is gone and she can see it now. She can see the snow and the ice and she can see the _wind,_ like it's an actual thing, like every gust is made of concrete and steel and even behind the protection of the homestead walls, she can still feel the thudding impact of every whip as the Witch throws them like knives.

It's a bad one, she can tell, worse probably than the last one and _that_ one brought the town to a standstill for the better part of a week, trapping everyone where they were and _that's_ a feeling Waverly knows all too well.

She glances over her shoulder at the bed. The bed where Nicole still sleeps and yeah, Waverly knows what it's like to feel trapped.

But she's not so sure she'd mind it _now._

That last Witch that came through was just three years ago and it _was_ bad but they saw it coming. They saw the signs and the good (and the not so good and the just fucking _weird_ ) people of Purgatory did their best to prepare. The old people stocked up on bread and milk and boarded windows and hunkered down to ride it out. Curtis laid down tarps, nailing them into the ground over his gardens. He was a smart man (except maybe in who he left his _creepy shit_ to) and he knew no tarps were gonna do any good, no plastic sheets were gonna keep the soil and the seeds beneath from being ravaged and ripped and sliced by the Witch. He _knew_ but he said he "had to try. Can't just _let_ the old bitch win" and Waverly nodded along and stacked her books atop her desk and and then offered to help with the tarps.

She knew a little something about the futility - and the need to ignore it - of trying.

The old people hoarded and the young ones stocked up on booze and beer and condoms. Curtis tarped and Gus made sure they had enough wood for when the power inevitably went out - and Waverly was _sure_ she stocked up on _batteries_ too, thank you very much - and Nedley coordinated _stuff_ (Waves was never quite sure what) and Shorty made sure he had enough beer to last a month, so like half his usual supply, and people headed home and expected the worst and hoped for the best. And Waverly…

"You sure you don't want to stay with us?" Gus asked and Waverly shook her head and said she'd be fine - just _fine_ \- in her room over the bar. She was a grownup now, she'd been eighteen for two _whole months_ and she had her books and three different flashlights and enough candles to open her own shop and, besides, she'd be perfectly safe and totally protected.

"Champ will be with me."

And if Waverly had… _ignored…_ the way Gus rolled her eyes practically back into her skull, well, she could be forgiven. She was in love.

Or, you know, she thought she was. She wanted to be. She was supposed to be.

Waverly watches Nicole from the window, the Witch outside long forgotten as she counts the slow rises and falls of her the other woman's chest, as the hypnotic force of it lulls her and soothes her and she forgets the wind and she forgets the snow and the ice and she hardly feels the cold through the thin glass anymore.

She lets the blinds flick shut and scoots back across the cold floor and snuggles back under the blankets, curling against Nicole as the redhead almost unconsciously loops an arm around her and pulls her close.

And, not for the first time, Waverly wonders how she could have ever been so dumb.

* * *

When she thinks about it _now_ (what with now being _here_ and now being _snuggled_ and now being _Nicole)_ Waverly thinks of it as dumb.

Three years ago, when the worst Witch in a century ripped through town with a beautiful fury, leaving three people and four horses dead and a cleanup that seemed to take months in her wake?

It wasn't so much dumb as it was… necessary.

Curtis hauled wood and Gus checked batteries and Waverly made sure that Champ had her spare key to the bar and he knew when to be there and that he was sure, as in "Sure you want to do this?"

She _meant_ riding out the storm with her. _She_ meant spending that much time in that small a space with no way out and no escape and - once the power went - not all that much to do and if she'd been thinking about it _at all_ , Waverly probably would have realized that _that_ was something Champ was oh so _very_ sure about.

If she'd thought of _that_ , if she'd been focused on Champ's needs (like, you know, every _other_ time they were together) maybe Waves would have seen the error of her ways. But she was trying to help Curtis and Gus and she was worried about Shorty all alone and there'd been a particular passage in one of her books about a particular revenant (some guy named _Jack_ ) that had her spooked and so, no, she wasn't thinking about Champ or little Champ or what _either_ of them expected to be getting… up… to while they waited out the Witch.

That was her first mistake.

When she thinks about it now, what with _now_ being the seemingly endless number of positions and configurations and arrangements she and Nicole can make of their bodies while they're literally _sleeping_ together, Waverly is pretty sure (like _completely) (_ like _100%_ ) that Champ was _always_ her first and her second and her last and her _biggest_ mistake. She hadn't needed to be trapped with him for a week to know that but…

Ah, there it is. But.

There was _always_ a but and when it came to her and Champ, there'd been plenty of 'but' to go around. She'd had a but, an excuse, a _reason_ for everything. And Champ had _needed_ every single one.

He was a boy-man, for sure, _but_ he _was_ sweet, or at least he was to her. Once. One time in tenth grade when he'd told her she looked pretty that day, with her hair braided like that instead of just always falling around her face where it covered up her eyes and made it hard to see those sweet, sweet lips and yes, _that_ was what passed for sweet in Purgatory and, really, it wasn't what he said, more that he'd actually said _something_ and that was more than pretty much any other guy in Purgatory who wasn't old enough to be her father and dirty enough to think cursed girls were hot and so yeah, it _counted._

And sure, he spent more time on his appearance than she did, _but_ he was hot. At least by Purgatory standards and it wasn't like Waverly was hitting the big city to find herself a male (or… _not_ male cause yeah, she'd always kinda known) model any time soon. And yes, Champ was cocky and arrogant _but_ that made him _cool_ and _popular_ and he was exactly what any (not that) self respecting, well adjusted (compared to Wynonna, maybe), and desperate not to be cursed (with stares and whispers and 'oh, that's _her_ ') girl could want.

What it boiled down to, in the end, what all those 'buts' added up to was that what Champ _was,_ was normal and, back then, that was what Waverly wanted… no… not wanted, not like she wanted chocolate covered cherries or that bubble gum sake she'd seen online. Normal wasn't like _that_ , normal was what she _needed_ because normal was what she _was._ Or so she said to anyone and everyone who would listen.

"I'm not _her_ ," Waverly said and, really, she could have meant _either_ her, the one who got _dragged_ off in the night or the one who _snuck_ away in it. "I'm just like _you_ ," she said and it didn't matter even a little who she was talking to cause she _could_ be, she could be just like them if she tried.

And for so very long, she _so_ tried.

Waverly said all that but what she _meant_ \- and what she knew _they_ heard - was 'I'm not an _Earp_. It might be my name but it's not _what_ I am.' She meant it but she never said it, not out loud, because somehow… somehow that would have been too much. It would have been one step over the invisible line she had drawn for herself, the one she'd sworn in her head that she'd never cross. She could pretend and she could fake it (and with Champ there was a lot of _that_ ) and she could act the part for all she was worth.

But she would always know better.

Waverly would always know that inside, under the need for normal and the willingness to endure almost anything - even Champ - to get it, and under the flirty flirt flirting and short shorts and crop tops that got _his_ attention and blinded the rest of _them_ , she would always know the truth.

She was nothing _but_ an Earp and she didn't need a _name_ to tell her that.

It was in everything she did that no one else saw. It was there when she was alone with her books and when she aced one class after another. There it was, in every language she learned, every bit of family history she uncovered. _She_ saw it in every bit of lore about the curse and the revenants and the heirs. It was _right there_ , in every reason she couldn't find for why she couldn't do it, for why _she_ couldn't break the curse.

It was there every morning when she woke up and _she_ was still _there_. Every day she woke up in Purgatory proved it. Willa was dead and Wynonna was gone and Waverly was… different… and maybe she was acting a part and maybe she was, in her own silent way, denying everything as much as Wynonna ever had. Maybe she was spending her every waking moment around other people _pretending,_ but (and there it is, _again_ ) that was just for them and when she was alone, when she didn't have to fake a fucking thing, she was still _there_ and _she_ was still _trying_ and _that_ , she'd thought, had to count for something.

Waverly pops one eye open and let's her gaze trace a slow path over Nicole's face, watching the way her eyes flutter as she dreams and the way her lips part, ever so slightly as she breathes. She's _there_ and Nicole's _there_ and they're safe and they're protected and, in that moment, they're nothing if not normal. Except…

Except that's just pretend.

Because it's only for a moment. And yeah, that moment might last a week or ten days or however long it takes the Witch to do her business but it's still just a moment. And then they'll be back out there, with Wynonna and Doc and Dolls (and _Willa_ ) (can't forget _her_ , no matter how hard she might try) and the revenants and the Triangle and the gun.

But if she's still pretending, if she's still trying to have anything… normal… if she's still hiding from the one person she lov… _likes_ … then maybe staying and trying didn't count for anything at all.

Waverly slowly slips from Nicole's grasp and pads silently into the other room, plucking a book and a folder and a set of photos from one of her boxes and boxes and boxes of proof that yeah, she really is an Earp, and makes her way back to the bedroom. She settles down on the bed, not as close to Nicole as she'd like but if she's gonna do this then she's gonna do it right.

"Nicole?" she says, gently nudging the other woman. "Baby? Can you wake up? There's something… there's something I need to tell you."


	3. Chapter 3

Waverly's faced revenants determined to kill her, revenants determined to use her to hurt and _then_ kill her sister, revenants determined to fuck with her mind and make her want to kill _herself_.

She's been shot at by mercenaries and demons. She's had her head in a noose and a skull in her hands. She stared down a psycho witch while holding said skull in her hands and she stabbed a not-a-stripper in the head with scissors. She watched her father die and her sister be snacthed awat in the night. She spent years working alone and now she works alongside an undead (he prefers _not_ dead but _really_?) and a Marshall who sometimes has more secrets than sense.

She has, over the years, dealt with drunk Wynonna and sober Wynonna and miserable Wynonna and happy Wynonna ( _once_ ) and… well… _Wynonna_.

Waverly spends her days - _all_ her days - living under a curse she didn't create and she can't break, in a town that seems hell bent on finding new and inventive and newly inventive (and bloody) ways to try and kill her and those she loves. And yet…

And _yet_ , it only take a few minutes and a bit of enthusiasm (which should be endearing but seems more terrifying) and a smile she thought she could only love before Waverly realizes that she doesn't fear anything like she fears the woman sharing her bed.

Nicole takes it all pretty well, surprisingly well, _worryingly_ well, really. Waverly expected more of a freakout, more of a panic, more of 'you kept _this_ from me?' and 'what the _hell_ do you mean _demons_?' A little more skeptical Gus and a little less gimme a gun and a stake and some silver bullets Buffy the Revenant Slayer.

Waverly had hoped that, eventually, Nicole might be on board with the whole thing, but this is a _lot_ sooner than eventually and Nicole isn't just on board, she's _driving_ the damn truck.

She handles the idea that there are these… _things_ … (she gets the idea, but the word, _revenants_ , seems to trip her up but Waverly supposes 'hell spawns' or 'evil fuckers' both work just as well) _and_ that they're trapped inside the Triangle _and_ that there's a curse _and_ all the rest and she handles it with _ease_. Instead, it's Waverly who's thrown a bit, surprised not just at Nicole's reaction but also at just how much _rest_ there is, how deep that lake seems to go, how just when she thinks she's hit bottom, she finds more and more depths to go.

It's weird, she _knows_ \- their life - but she doesn't really _get it_ until she actually says it all _out loud_.

It _is_ weird, but Nicole seems to revel in the weird, seems to soak up every little nugget, swallowing them down and popping right back up for more.

Henry is Doc Holliday? _Yes_ , he's _that_ Doc Holliday.

"That explains the hat," Nicole says with a confident nod. "And that… _thing_ … on his lip."

Waverly's not entirely sure _anything_ explains Doc's stache.

What about Wyatt Earp's kills coming back to sort-of-life and are seeking revenge and escape from their triangular prison? "Got it," Nicole says. "How many we talking here? Forty, fifty? Sorry, I should have brushed up on my Earpstory."

Waverly nods and tells her it _was_ in the seventies but it's down to like sixty-something now and she knows the _exact_ number but it's slipping her mind at the moment cause "Wait… _Earpstory_?"

"Well, yeah," Nicole says as she's sitting on the bed with a note pad and a pen, like a good little student and she's making Waverly feel like she should be addressing her as _Ms. Earp_ and asking for _extra credit_ and no, that's not distracting _at_ _all_. "Earp history," she says. " _Earpstory_."

It's weird and adorable all at once (werdorable?) and it's all Waverly can do not to tackle her right then and there, right on top of the photos and the books and the years of painstakingly compiled and collated and collected research, organization _be damned_.

Peacemaker doesn't bother Nicole - not even a little - because of _course_ there's a mystical weapon, she'd be disappointed if there _wasn't_ and that "explains why Wynonna doesn't replace it with one of the like fifty guns Dolls has in the safe."

"You know about the safe?" Waverly asks, as if _she_ knows about the safe.

"I'm a cop, baby," Nicole says. "I wouldn't be doing my job very well if I didn't."

Point, Nicole.

Bobo being _Bobo_ \- as in _Waverly_ 's Bobo, the imaginary friend from Hell (literally) - doesn't bother her and there's not a lick of judgement in her eyes as Waverly tells her of the talisman and the attack and that she was the one who let the Seven take them, that it was her fault her father and her sister… well… her _father,_ anyway… died.

"Bullshit," Nicole says under her breath but still loud _enough_ that Waverly hears it but she can pretend she didn't, even if the small smile that flits across her face says different. And then Nicole nods along as Waverly talks about being 'keeper of the bones' and the Stone Witch and even _that_ \- the existence of magic and spells and bones that come back to life and a witch that _isn't_ the storm - doesn't seem to surprise or unnerve her in the least.

"Jack the Ripper kidnapped your sister in front of me," Nicole says, her eyes darkening at the memory, at that feeling of failure, of being derelict in her duty as a cop _and_ as a girlfriend, even if back then _that_ had still only been a wish. "A witch? _Please_."

She takes it _all_ , every last bit of it and she takes it _well_ , better than Waverly could have imagined, better than she had even let herself have _hope_ for and that should make everything right, that should make this the best day _ever_ , but, really, it just makes it all _worse_ , because that just can't be, nobody's _that_ perfect and no one is that much of a Mary fucking Sue (and Waverly didn't even know what _that_ was till she looked it up online, during a furtive and futile attempt at a 'so you think you might be gay' quiz) and Waverly wants to believe, she _really really_ does.

But...

Waverly nods and she smiles and she says that yes, she's _so_ happy it's all out in the open now and she's _so_ relieved and she feels _so_ much lighter now when, really, she's _so_ freaking right the hell out, she's _so_ losing her shit, she's _so_ panicking that it's all an act, that Nicole is really plotting her escape, that she's waiting for the _moment_ she's no longer an actually captive audience, trapped here by the Witch and the second _that's_ over, when the storm and the roads and the sky clears, she's going to be out the door and down the road and she's only gonna stop long enough to turn in her badge but she's gonna keep her gun cause let's face it.

There's fucking crazies in this town.

Waverly does her best to ignore it, to pretend she's not feeling it. She smiles and she nods and she hops onto the bed and into Nicole's arms and snuggles close as her girlfriend flips through her research and her notes, asking questions here and there, nodding with every answer, letting loose with the occasional 'I knew it' (and Waverly can't believe - try as she might - that she _did_.)

She cuddles closer and watches as Nicole works her way through some dusty old book, a history of the Ghost River - more fiction than fact - that Waverly bought years ago from a library sale and she does her best to be there, _just_ there, with _Nicole_ and not in her own head and to stop doing that thing she does that causes so much trouble - you know, _thinking_ \- and, especially, to stop thinking that Nicole's gonna leave, that she's gonna run.

Waverly tries, really she does.

But history's just not on her side.

* * *

Waverly doesn't move or speak or do much of anything for a long while, except stay _right there_ , right in Nicole's arms _and_ right in the _moment_ , right there with her and right there in warmth and happiness and all the sorts of things her whole life has trained her to dream of and hope for but to always _know_ will never last.

But she's determined to, at least, enjoy it while it lasts.

The Witch is roaring outside and the fire they built earlier is slowly dying and the cold is starting to creep in, but neither of them seems to feel it. And even if she did? Even if she was freezing and shivering and her toes were turning blue and her fingers were numb, Waverly wouldn't move an inch. She's pretty sure she doesn't ever want to move again.

Which, of course, is why she says "I spent the last Witch with Champ."

Never let it be said Wynonna's the only one who doesn't know when to shut up.

The words tumble out before she can stop them and Waverly feels Nicole tenses under her at the sound of his name and she can't help smiling a little at that, at that instant flare of jealousy that she knows she should find silly and petty and beneath her.

Or, you know, kinda sweet and caring and maybe just a little hot.

She considers, briefly, if maybe there's a Champ in Nicole's past. Probably not, she figures cause Nicole seems very… not _anti_ guy but not exactly _pro_ them either… but maybe it's nto a guy, but instead there's a girl or a woman or two and Waverly wonders when she should ask about _that_ , cause that's what you do, right? When you're a couple? You talk about your pasts (which she's _done_ ) and your old lovers (and Champ's her only one of _those_ ) and your old _loves_ (and Waverly's not as sure as she once was that Champ, or anyone _before now_ , really fits that particular bill) and - as much as she doesn't want to even imagine Nicole with anyone else - that sort of talk…

It might be nice.

Nicer than revenants and witches and curses and 'hey, when are you going to take off and get away from me as fast as you can', at least.

"I know you don't like him," Waverly says and she's got no idea, really, where she's going with this, except she kinda feels like she has to. Go with it, that is. "And I don't really either, and I'm not sure… " She trails off, cutting herself off before the lie, before she can rewrite her own history and say that she never did, because she won't do _that_. It wouldn't be true and it wouldn't be right and it wouldn't be fair. Not to Champ.

Or to herself.

Waverly rolls herself free of Nicole's arms - the cold settling on her almost immediately - and scoots to the edge of the bed. "I liked Champ," she says and she feels Nicole sitting up behind her, but not moving any closer, respecting her space - respecting _her_ \- and yeah, _that's_ new, add another item it to _that_ long long list. "He was funny and he was goofy and he was… he was _Champ_ and he'd always _been_ Champ and I'm pretty sure he's always gonna _be_ Champ."

She knows Nicole's never thought of being Champ as a good thing and she can't really blame her but Waverly knows him better and yeah, she knows there's not really all that much _to_ him to _know_ better, but…

"He stayed."

She says it softly and if Nicole was breathing just a little heavier or the fire was crackling just a little louder in the other room or the Witch chose that exact moment to swirl the wind through the rafters and make the house creak, the words probably would have died an almost silent death in the cold of Waverly's breath.

But she's not and it isn't and it doesn't, so they don't.

"At the beginning, when we started dating," Waverly says, "people wondered why _he_ was with _me_. Why he was dating the weird little Earp girl, the one…" She grips the edge of the bed tight in her hands and shivers against the cold. "The one that was left."

She remembers the looks and the whispers and the slow 'that poor boy' shakes of so many heads and Waverly knows - she _knows_ \- that if _she'd_ been _him_? She'd have run the very first day.

But Champ stayed.

Waverly pulls a folder out of the pile of them on the bed, barely glancing at the contents as she thumbs through it. "Eventually," she says, "no matter how normal I acted, I always ended up… _here_ ," she taps the folder. "Sooner or later, I ended up back with my books and my courses and my incessant library searches." She smiles, mostly to herself, as she remembers. "Gus and Curtis wouldn't let me drive, not by myself and _certainly_ not out of town - they taught me how to shoot but _driving_ was a no no - so I used to send Champ on runs for me. I sent him three towns over for that book," she says, tipping her head at the book in Nicole's hands.

And still, Champ stayed.

"Champ was… _is_ … an ass," Waverly says. She stands up, collecting the few folders that start to slide off the bed as she moves and stacking them on the small table next to the bed.. "He's not too bright and I used to keep an extra bottle of whiskey under my bed at all times cause sometimes I needed a little alone time and when he's drunk, he can't… you know."

It occurs to her that Nicole probably _doesn't_ , well, she _does_ cause she knows, but she doesn't _know_ and somehow Waverly's incredibly jealous of _that_.

"He's a boy in a man's body and he's insensitive," she says. "And there was every reason in the world for that… shithead… to leave me time and time and time again."

But he stayed. Time and time and time again.

Waverly crosses the tiny space between the bed and the wall, leaning against it, her eyes focused on the window, on the Witch just beyond the glass, roaring through the woods. There's a part of her - small but _fierce_ \- that wants to stride out into it, that wants to risk certain death just for the chance to go somewhere, anywhere. Just so long as the some or the any or the where isn't _here_.

She wants to run. She wants to run _first_.

"You know what the thing is about the Witch?" she asks and even though Nicole doesn't say anything - not an answer or even so much as a 'what the hell' about the subject change - Waverly can see her reflection shaking its head in the glass. "It comes," she says, "it storms in and it gets right in your face and it makes itself _known_." She watches it rage just outside, captivating in its power. "And then it just… goes. It just disappears and it's almost like it wasn't even here and you wouldn't even know it had been if it weren't for the…"

"Wreckage," Nicole suggests softly and Waverly nods. That's as good a word as any, that's a _perfect_ word.

The last Witch that came through was three years ago, just past her eighteenth birthday, and it hit on a weekend, slamming its way into town on a Friday night. Waverly remembers watching it charge its way down Main Street, blowing and bellowing and going wherever it wanted, doing whatever it felt, all force and fury and sheer act of fucking _nature_.

"The gusts," she says, shivering as the chill of the memory. "The last one… the wind… it shook my window, and trembled the glass and seeped in through the cracks and kept blowing out my candles."

She stayed there, her forehead pressed against the glass, watching as the cycle of snow then ice then wind repeated itself over and over and _over_ , until her eyes grew heavy and she forced herself to stumble to the bed and Champ and the warmth of another body, shielding her - however briefly - against the cold.

It stayed that way, the cycle repeating, day after day and night after night, seven in all, every one blending into the next, snow and ice and wind and Champ and sex and sleep until Waverly woke that _next_ Friday and the Witch…

She was gone.

"She left without warning," Waverly says and she _means_ the storm but she _doesn't_ too and she's not sure if Nicole gets that as easily as she did all the rest, not sure that even if she does, if she gets the… _implications_. "She was gone and all that was left was that… wreckage."

Ice and snow and piles upon piles of it, burying everything in sight.

"It took forever," Waverly says, "to dig out, to unbury and to… get back to… normal." She runs a finger along the glass, the cold from outside almost burning her skin. "I hope," she says, "I hope this one isn't as bad."

She hopes, she really does.

But she knows. History's just not on her side.


	4. Chapter 4

Nicole watches Waverly from across the kitchen counter and does her best to make it somewhat less obvious that she's staring.

It's hard. But she manages. She _thinks_.

She stands in the kitchen, her hands busy with the tea kettle and the stove and the burner and trying to keep her eyes focused on the counter and the tiny front entryway and the something like five feet of _solid_ space between them. Nicole wonders if Waverly can feel it too, the tension, so thick in the air that it seems like she could reach out and pluck a handful of it right out, feel it heavy and loaded in her hands.

Nicole tries to tell herself that It's _just_ space, it's _just_ distance, it's just… _there_ … and maybe it isn't anything, maybe it's all in her head.

Of course, _that's_ what she used to think about the shit going on in Purgatory.

Waverly's leaning against the doorframe, peeking out around the curtains on the tiny side panel windows, watching the Witch at work. "We didn't have storms like this," Nicole says, breaking the silence, trying to slice off even the thinnest sliver of that tension. "Where I grew up, the worst we ever got was a few inches, _maybe_ a foot."

Waverly nods but she doesn't speak and Nicole leans against the counter, eyes still tracking those few feet between them. It's the farthest they've been apart (when they're awake) since she got here and she knows that shouldn't bother her - they can't be _rightthere_ or touching or kissing _all_ the time - but it does, it _bothers_ and _that_ bothers her more.

It's too soon for that, she reasons. It's too soon after meeting, even if meeting came after a while (read: _weeks_ ) of those same trying not to be obvious stares, from across the street or across Shorty's, always on the busy nights, when the crowd was so thick and the bar so thronged that even a tall ginger cop could (kinda) blend in. It's too soon after the first kiss, even if _that_ kiss was followed by a second and a third and a fourth (with some roaming hands) and a fifth and a sixth and then they weren't really distinct and separate and they all ran together and Nicole sort of lost count.

Even if she doesn't know the _exact_ number other than it's somewhere between 'not enough' and 'not even _close_ to enough'.

But they've been working this at Waverly's pace and she's got issues and concerns - like coming out and figuring out and oh, not _dying_ \- and so Nicole knows that it's all too soon and it's all too fast and too sudden and too quick and yes, she _should_ care and she _should_ be thinking about it - about _her_ \- but she _shouldn't_ be feeling this… this… _ache_ … not this soon and not over this distance cause, _come on_ , it's five _feet_ , it's the width of a room, it's natural, it's _normal_.

Except they're trapped inside a magically warded old house, riding out the kinda storm that's killed, safely hidden away - for the _moment_ \- from a hoard of revenant killers and a supposedly dead sister and a gun that sends demons to Hell.

For the first time in her life, Nicole's in a relationship where being gay is the least _different_ thing about it and she knows that whatever they are - and whatever they're going to be - there's nothing about that's even remotely normal. And she's fine with that, as long as whatever it is they become, they do it together.

She's just not so sure on that last part at the moment.

* * *

Waverly's not trying to push Nicole away.

Or maybe, _really_ , it's better to say that she's not _actively_ trying to push her away. Silence, Waverly knows, is pretty close to trying. Pulling away - literally _dodging_ Nicole's touch at one point - and ghosting around the homestead and not saying a word for like close to an hour (really, it's _two_ ) _is_ trying.

But she's not…

Fuck it.

She _is_. She doesn't _want_ to but she still is and she doesn't know how to stop and no amount of not that well hidden stares or attempts at polite conversation on Nicole's part will change that.

Waverly's got no idea what will.

She uses two fingers to tug the new blue curtains aside, the ones Wynonna hung just last week on either side of the door. _She_ was trying - as only Wynonna could - to add a little more _home_ to the stead, hoping that some fabric from the Sears downtown, a bright blue bundle of cloth and geometric patterns and sparkles (yes, _sparkles_ , she'd said, they were shiny and pretty and they matched the ones in the living room, you know, _sort of_ , and they were on sale and they're _nice_ so shut the fuck up about the damn sparkles) might turn the place into something less burned out old husk and more… safe haven.

For, you know, _Willa_.

"She spent years in that cult," Wynonna said. She mumbled the words out around a nail trapped between her lips as she tap-tap-tapped _another_ nail into the wall, top _and_ bottom, cause she'd mis-measured (as in, she _didn't_ ) and the curtains were too long and the fabric overflowed at the bottom, spilling out into the room and so she had to bunch it and nail it to the wall, holding it in place. "I want Willa to feel at home," she said, stepping back to check her work while Waverly stood back and watched. "Not like she's traded one bunch of crazies and _their_ whack-shack prison for another."

Waverly understood, it all made sense, it was the… _sisterly_ thing to do. But she'd seen the look on Willa's face when she'd come in that first night, with Gus staring at her like she'd seen a ghost - which was _possible_ , Waverly figured - and she'd seen the way her sist… _Willa's_ … eyes had darted from one spot and one face to the next and Waverly knew _that_ look. That look wasn't home and it wasn't comfort and it wasn't safe _anything_ , much less haven.

That look was fear and terror and panic and a dash of certain doom. It was the same look - the _last_ look - she'd ever seen in her sister's eyes, the night of the Seven. And that was nothing that curtains and sparkles and home sweet busted home was going to cure.

But still. It was nice that Wynonna… _tried_.

For, you know, _Willa_.

Waverly watches Nicole in the kitchen, fussing with the kettle and the tea, hunting through a cabinet or two for snacks and it seems like this whole trying thing is going around and at least _someone_ is trying for _her_.

It should make her feel better, it really _should_.

She turns back to the outside, peering through the glass like she expects anything to be different. She's looked from the bedroom and she's looked from the living room and she's looked from the kitchen and it's like the house is spinning on an axis, swiveling beneath her so she always gets the same view. White. White. A bit more… _white_.

There's nothing else for her to see, nothing but white everywhere she looks. There are moments, small ones, when it's peaceful and plain and almost… soothing. And then Waverly feels it, the tremors of it through the glass, every gust a reminder - a stark punch to the gut - of the power of the Witch, of how little there is separating them from her, nothing but the old homestead walls. They're strong and they're steady and they were built to last, but Waverly can _hear_ and she can _feel_ the weary in every creak and every groan.

She's not concerned that they won't hold, that they can't endure, not _really_. This isn't their first Witch. But Waverly knows now, more than she ever did, that everything (and every _one_ ) has a breaking point, that spot on the road when it doesn't matter how far you've gone or how long you've been riding. It doesn't matter if it's the first round, the second or the two _hundred_ and second.

It's the _last_.

 _That_ terrifies her, the thought that they might already be _there_ , at the last. It's too soon and it's too quick and she's not ready for it to be done but she can't convince herself it's not. Waverly watches the world outside - her yard and her woods and Nicole's truck and that fence that fell and everything else she can't see anymore - all of it wiped away by the Witch and she can't help noticing how quick it all goes, how fast it all just… _disappears_ … leaving nothing behind but a blank space.

But that should be _good_ , right? _That's_ possibility, that's an unwritten page, an open door. That's something she should be grateful for. Something new and something different and a chance.

That's what she was hoping for, that was why she told Nicole. For a chance. For a chance at something… _hers_.

Nicole's still there and Nicole's not gone (or dead) (or thought to be dead) (or believed to be dead and at the bottom of a well and what the _fuck_ is her life?) and Waverly knows she should be grateful and excited and she should…

 _Try_.

But it's been a long time. And she really isn't sure she remembers how.

* * *

It isn't five feet.

That distance between them. Nicole's done the math, which is funny to say cause this is anything but _science_ , and she knows it isn't five feet.

It's miles.

There are miles and miles between them, a chasm turning into a canyon, and Waverly is slipping further and further _down_ and further and further _away_ and Nicole doesn't know how to reach her. There's no rope to toss her, no way to hold her - to hold _on_ and hold _there_ \- and it's driving Nicole mad.

She watched a demon serial killer kidnap a woman right in front of her while leaving her for dead and _this_ is still easily the most helpless Nicole has ever felt.

The kettle hums along on the stove and she forces herself to deal with _that_ , to give the whistling little pot her undivided attention, to stare at _it_ instead of _her_. Nicole knows she doesn't _have_ to watch it - assuming that thing about the watched pot applies to kettles too ( _and_ girlfriends) - but it's something to do. Something that _isn't_ staring at Waverly until she blushes or smiles (or runs from the room and locks herself away, and Nicole hates thinking that _that_ is the most likely choice), something that _isn't_ pinning Waverly against the front door and kissing her until she can't breathe or stand or both.

Something that isn't saying to hell with 'too soon' and with the kettle and the miles. Something that isn't crossing that chasm and taking Waverly by the hand and _dragging_ her back to the bedroom and then _driving_ that… _whatever_ … that's dancing around in her head - revenants or not so dead sisters or not so _gone_ ones or the witch or the _Witch_ \- away with curling toes and clenching hands and throaty moans and whispers of 'I love you' that are loud enough for her to say but not so that Waverly can hear.

You know, not over the moans and all.

 _That's_ what Nicole does - she _does_. It's her nature, it's her _way_. It was her way when she was nine and stole her brother's rifle and taught herself to shoot. It was her way when she quit basketball her senior year so she could take the Krav Maga class at the local Y instead. It was her way when she walked into Shorty's and ordered a cappuccino with every intention of asking Waverly Earp out on a date, her douche canoe boyfriend be damned.

Except…

She didn't. Nicole _does_ , but that day she _didn't._ She waited. She bided her time and held her peace and let Waverly come to her. That's what she's done virtually every moment _since_ that moment, what she's done with Waverly… _for_ Waverly. Nicole has let her dictate the pace, steer the ship, run the show.

The kettle whistles and Nicole shuts it off, sliding it from the burner over to the two clean mugs she found in the back of a cabinet that was too high for Waverly to reach. She stares at them there on the counter, one kettle and two mugs, and it occurs to her that she _hates_ tea, almost as much as she hates _waiting_ , almost as much as she hates _feeling powerless_ and yet…

She's _drinking_ it (or going to) and she's _doing_ it (and has been) and she's _feeling_ it (and sees no end in sight) and Nicole knows it doesn't matter how 'too soon' it is or how hard it might be, she'd drink a thousand cups and she'd wait a hundred years (which might be possible in Purgatory) if that's what it took, so she pours the tea and turns to offer one to Waverly - an olive branch in a chipped in three spots Purgatory High School coffee mug - but Waverly's not there.

Or, really, she is. She's not there as in by the door, she's there as in _right there_ , the distance gone and the miles erased and there's a look on her face that Nicole can't read, but she stops even trying when Waverly goes up on her tiptoes, capturing her girlfriend's lips with her own and Nicole nearly drops the mugs barely managing to set them - blindly - back down next to the stove before bringing her hands around to find her girlfriend's hips and pull her closer.

Nicole breaks the kiss first - cursing herself for it - but she needs to ask. "Wave -" is all she gets out before Waverly cuts her off with another, more gentle and shorter kiss, one _she's_ the first to break as she drops back to her feet and presses her head against Nicole's chest.

"When I was six," she says, "we had a dog. A beagle named Bailey."

Nicole's lost even before Waverly really starts but she doesn't let it show, she doesn't flinch or ask her what she's talking about. She just rolls with it.

She lives in Purgatory now. Rolling with it is something of a necessity.

"She loved daddy and she loved me and she _hated_ Wynonna," Waverly says. Her arms wrap around Nicole as she scoots closer pressing Nicole back against the stove, back as far as she can go, even as Waverly's feet keep shuffling forward, like she can't get close enough. "She mostly tolerated Willa."

Nicole knows the feeling.

"A Witch came through that year, a bad one, worse than this." Nicole runs her hands along Waverly's back and she hardly even realizes she's doing it until she feels Waverly shiver beneath her touch. "Bailey got out, somehow, and she…"

Nicole understands the trail off. "I'm sorry," she says, the words whispering out into Waverly's hair as she plants a small kiss atop her girlfriend's head.

"I wasn't old enough to remember my mother so Bailey was the first... she was the first one I lost." She _says_ 'I lost' but Nicole _hears_ 'who left' and then Waverly ducks her head and Nicole can feel the faint damp of tears on her shirt. "Three months later the Seven came and then daddy and Willa…"

Waverly steps back - _steps_ , not _pulls_ \- and yeah, there's space between them again but Nicole knows it's just _that_ , not _distance._ Waverly looks up at her and it's all right there, right in her eyes.

"This was supposed to… well.." Waverly takes another step back until she's pressed against the other counter, her hands at her sides, fingers drumming against her thighs. "This _was_ easy," she says, "telling you, I mean. But it was _supposed_ to be hard and it was supposed to be scary and you were supposed to look at me like I'd lost my damn mind."

Nicole doesn't say anything. She's almost afraid to, worried that she'll somehow say the _wrong_ thing and put the cork back in the bottle.

"When Bailey got out," Waverly says, her eyes dropping to the floor, "The back door got open, just a little, just _enough_ and she must have nosed it open the rest of the way. She just went out like we taught her, to… do her business, you know?"

Nicole nods though she's never had a dog. Three cats, two turtles, and one snake when she was nine. It lasted a week.

Waverly looks over her shoulder, watching the Witch bluster and froth outside the window. "It was like this one," she says. "Blowing and swirling and white from top to bottom and Bailey must have gotten… lost. Turned around to come back in and she couldn't see the way and all the smells were…"

She blinks back a few more tears, trying to focus on her point - cause she _does_ have one - and getting to it before she loses Nicole completely.

"Somewhere out there, she lost her way," Waverly says. "And she just kept going and every step she thought she was taking back to us… and once we realized she was gone and where she went…"

"You couldn't leave her out there, could you?" Nicole asks and Waverly's eyes dart up, catching hers. "You dated Champ," she says. "Clearly you have a thing for animals."

Waverly snorts and then coughs and then nods quickly, grateful for the small - but meaningful - break in the moment. "I bundled up," she says. "Tee shirt and a sweater and a _second_ sweater and the heaviest woolen socks I had and my thickest snow boots."

"How far? Nicole asks. She moves over a little, pushing the mugs and the kettle back so she can hop up on the counter. "How far did you get?"

"Three steps," Waverly says, very specific about the number, very precise.

It's _easy_ to be so exacting because she remembers every one. The first one out the door and onto the front step and she could already feel it, the cold biting against her. And then the second - off the step and into the drifts - and the slow progression of the cold as it leeched its way through the layers and onto her skin, coating and covering and molding to her like a cast.

"I remember," she says, "on that third step, I sank. It didn't look that high or that deep, it was so smooth and perfect, like a perfectly frosted sheet cake you could just slide across."

That frosting cracked and crumbled beneath her feet and she sank into the snow as it quickly wormed its way into her boots, surrounding her feet, those woolen socks turning into fuzzy frozen caskets.

"It took daddy four hours to warm me back up," Waverly says. "Four hours, most all the hot water we had and I sat so close to that fire I thought for certain I'd melt." She runs her hands along her arms, the prickling sensation of defrosting skin so real and so close. "And it never really stopped," she says. "The cold, I mean. The front door never shut quite right again, not tight enough, not sealed like it should."

Waverly walks back around the counter and over to the door. "Wynonna said it was the Witch," she says. She runs a finger along the seam, more insulated now, tight as a drum. "She said the Witch got her fingers in there and she wouldn't let go, that she was hanging on for dear life cause she wanted _in_ , she wanted… _needed_ … to spread. Like a cold or cancer. She wanted to fill every space."

Willa said _that_ was the thing about doors. Once you opened them… there was just no telling what might come through.

Waverly leans up against the door - all the way over _there_ \- but her eyes fall on Nicole and the distance doesn't seem too great. Yet.

"The Witch was gone in a day that year," Waverly says. "We found Bailey the next afternoon, she'd made it all the way to the fence line before…"

Nicole slides down off the counter but doesn't move any further.

"You were supposed to be like her," Waverly says. "Like the Witch. Here today, loud and alive and filling up all the spaces and then… gone."

"That's how it works?" Nicole asks, taking two small steps, brushing up against the other counter.

Waverly nods. "Yeah," she says. "That's how it always has. Bailey, daddy, Willa…"

She leaves off there and Nicole feels the _other_ name - the one she knows hurts more and lingers deeper than the others - right on the tip of her tongue.

"But you're not," Waverly says. "You're not going and at first I thought it was cause I waited, you know? I waited to tell you until you were trapped and there was nowhere to run." She pushes off the door and crosses the entryway, just a few scant inches of countertop between her and Nicole. "But you're not hiding and you're not locking yourself away and you're _making tea_ and you _hate_ tea."

It's right there. The words are _right there_.

But I love _you_.

"Tea's OK," Nicole says. "I don't… _hate_ it."

"You _do_ ," Waverly says as she leans against the counter, her strength slipping. "It makes no sense, I know," she says with a shake of her head. "It shouldn't be _this_ way," she says. "You staying… you _trying_ … that shouldn't scare me more than you going. But it _does_. Because if _you_ try and then _I_ try and then…"

"And then it doesn't work," Nicole finishes. "If you try and I still go, just like…" She still doesn't say the name, but it's there, in the air between them cause it's her house and it's her that brought them together, sort of, that put them in a similar orbit.

It's like it's her show and they're just bit players and someone forgot to give them the script.

Nicole leans against her side of the counter, wanting nothing more than to reach out across that small divide and take Waverly's hands in her own. "If that happened… _again_ … it would hurt. I get it," she says. "I understand, I really do."

And she really does. But that doesn't make knowing the woman she loves - cause she _does_ \- fears her, hurt any less.

"What do we do?" Waverly asks and this time… well… Nicole's got no answers. She could help with the whole coming out thing or the realizing you might like girls thing or even the fighting evil thing (though not so much the demon parts of it.) But this…

Nicole doesn't know. So she does what she does. She _does_.

She turns and walks back to the other counter, picking up the kettle - gone cold now - and pours it out into the sink before starting up a new one.

"What we do," she says, "is we make some tea. Cause _you_ like tea and _I_ like those little butter cookies I know your sister has stashed around here some place. So I'm going to make the tea and you're going to find those and then we're going to talk."

"Talk?"

Nicole nods. "Yes, _talk_. From opposite ends of the couch, with no… _touching_ …or kissing... and so no distractions." Waverly frowns and it's not like it's Nicole's favorite part of the idea either. "And we're going to figure it out. You and me and tea."

Waverly walks back around the counter, right up to Nicole, leaning against her and yeah, that whole no touching and kissing and distracting thing might not be quite so easy, not if just _this_ is enough to make Nicole's breath catch in her chest and her hands shake against the kettle.

"The cookies," Waverly says, reaching around her and sliding open a drawer next to the stove, the smallest of smiles playing across her lips. "Wynonna keeps them in here."

'Oh," Nicole says, nodding. And nodding. And _nodding_. "Right. The _cookies_."

Waverly steps back, giving Nicole a little space - and Nicole immediately realizes she hates _space_ even more than she hates _tea_ \- and, in obvious violation of the no touching rule, she takes Nicole's hand.

"I want to, you know," she says, her eyes lingering on Nicole's hand in hers. "If it counts for anything, I _want_ to _try_."

Rule or no rule, Nicole flips her hand around, lacing her fingers through Waverly's and she tugs her close, titling her head down and brushing her lips across Waverly's before resting their foreheads against each other.

"It counts," she whispers. "It _counts_."


	5. Chapter 5

They do it, at first, almost just like Nicole said. Opposite ends of the couch, sipping tea (and Waverly was right, Nicole _hates_ it) and talking.

Well… there's sitting and there's sipping and there's _silence_ , but two outta three ain't bad, right?

Waverly huddles back against the arm of the couch, safe on her end, with her knees tucked up to her chest and the sweatshirt stretched out over them. She _wants_ to try, she _said_ so and Nicole believes her, but Nicole also believes that wanting and doing are two different things and sometimes the trip between them is a long one.

And it's easy to get lost.

She knows that all too well.

Her mother always wanted. Wanted to love her, wanted to be OK with her, wanted… well… wanted something else - _someone_ else who _was_ something else - in the end, and she _did_ try, though not nearly hard enough but then, Nicole supposes, if her mother had tried harder, if she'd done better, then Nicole might not be _here_ and silence or no silence, Witch or no Witch, tea or no tea (preferably no), Nicole wouldn't trade here for anything.

She wouldn't trade it for anything even though they've been this way for fifteen minutes already, long enough for Nicole to work through most of her tea - she hasn't had anything to do _but_ sip, sip and _think_ and that never gets her anywhere good - and Waverly's cup is slowly growing cold on the coffee table, which really isn't much more than a couple of milk crates and a badly sanded two-by-four laid atop them.

Apparently furniture didn't scream 'home' as much as sparkles did.

They sit, on their opposite ends, and Nicole watches Waverly and Waverly tries to make it seem like she's _not_ watching Nicole, like she's not _waiting_ for her, for her to quit, to give up, to decide it's really all too insane and not at all worth it and even braving the Witch would be better than this.

There's a part of Waverly that _really_ doesn't think Nicole will. It's the same part of her that felt her breath stop and her heart shake and her world shift just the tiniest bit to the left (or the right or up or down, she's not at all sure of anything except that it _moved_ ) that first day in Shorty's, when she got stuck in her own shirt. It wasn't Nicole's touch that did it or her obvious (even to Waverly) flirting.

It was her eyes.

It was that moment when the shirt came unstuck and Waverly found herself staring straight into Nicole's eyes (straight _up_ , even in her boots) and there was… _something_ … there, something dancing in them that Waverly had never seen before. It wasn't lust - well, not _just_ lust - not like when Champ looked at her and she could damn near envision _exactly_ what he was thinking of doing to her (which might have had less to do with the expressiveness of Champ's eyes and a _lot_ more to do with it always being the same fucking thing.)

Even now, Waverly doesn't know what it was, not that she can put a word or a name to it at least, but she's got an _idea_ , a feeling about it, a feeling about how much… _joy_ … she saw there, so much unbridled happiness and she doesn't know if it was from looking at her (she likes to think so) or something else, but she knows how it made her _feel_. All warm and light, like the steam rising from her mug. Free and floating and drifting on the currents.

Waverly's imagined for most of her life that love feels a little something like that and she'd really like to find out, to _know_ , so she doesn't want to rush it or pressure or push, so she really _doesn't_ watch - much - as Nicole presses herself back against her end of the couch, her still sort of steaming mug of tea clutched between her hands, and waits, positioning herself as far as she can, giving Waverly all the space she needs but still being… _there_.

It's a delicate balance, Waverly imagines, being there without being _there_ , comforting without crowding, holding without touching. It can't be an easy thing, but Nicole's doing it - as best she can - she's _trying_ , and Waverly knows that should tell her something and that that _something_ should _not_ be that Nicole's trapped, that she's only still _there_ because she _can't_ be anywhere else, not with the Witch still roaring just outside.

"I wish it wasn't snowing," she says softly, the fuzzy blurred vision of Nicole she sees out of the corner of her eye, sitting a little more upright, paying a little more attention. "I wish… I wish you had the option to go, even if you wouldn't take it."

Waverly wraps her arms around her knees, holding herself tight. She's as bundled and huddled and tucked away as is possible and she knows it doesn't take a psych degree to read _those_ signs.

"Gus took me to a counselor once," she says. "It was more than once and more than _one_ , actually. You'd be surprised how many mental health professionals there are in Purgatory."

Nicole's pretty sure she really wouldn't be. Not at all.

"I was like thirteen the first time." Waverly wraps her arms tighter, shivering against the cold she doesn't really feel, not this close to the fire. "He called me introverted. Introverted and reserved to the point of withdrawn."

There were other terms too, she remembers. Self possessed. Closed off. Living inwardly, _that_ was her favorite. They all meant the same thing.

She picks at a thread, a tiny navy blue one dangling loose from one sleeve. "Those were the technical terms," she says. "In English? I was scared. Sacred and shy and weird and alone and… _alone_."

Nicole pulls her legs up onto the couch. She's spreading out a bit, expanding the perimeter (a little cop talk), but she's careful to stay on her half, careful not to spook Waverly. She thinks, for a long moment - and a longer, almost painful sip - of how to respond, weighing her options, choosing the right move.

There's always 'I know what you mean' and really she _does_. Maybe her sister didn't die and her brother didn't leave and her mother was always there, but Nicole _knows_.

Sometimes you feel the most alone when you actually _aren't_.

Or maybe she could go with the 'yeah, me too,' cause, her _too_. Her too with the counselor and the terms and the judgment that Waverly didn't really mention but Nicole heard it anyway.

But she doesn't want to 'project'.

Another one of those technical terms.

Nicole considers and Nicole weighs and she thinks about reaching out, about sharing a little but this isn't about _her_ , this isn't about _that_. So she thinks of the others but she settles on "What about Gus?" she asks. "And your uncle?"

"Curtis?" Nicole nods and Waverly smiles, a tiny thread of a thing, like the one she twirls between her fingers. "He was great and he was sweet and he did his best," she says. "But…"

But he wasn't Ward. But he wasn't Willa or Wynonna. He wasn't a mother, not that Waverly would have known the difference, and he wasn't a father or a sister and _those_ differences she _did_ know.

Nicole nods, filling in all those blanks in her head, all the while trying her hardest to ignore just how _that_ feels. It's almost like muscle memory, the way it reminds her. Not just of her own feelings, of drifting away from someone who was still _right there_ , but also of her training. Of interrogations, sitting across from a suspect, always having to _think_ her way through the conversation, never just going with it, never just _being_ there, cause she has to be one or two or three steps _ahead,_ always planning the next question, the next comment, always steering and guiding and _working_.

She doesn't want Waverly to be _work_ , not like _that_. She's had enough relationships that were like that, enough connections with people that she had to constantly navigate and rechart and rearrange. Nicole wants to work _with_ Waverly, not _on_ her and she knows getting _there,_ well, it _takes_ work and she's ready for _that_. Ready and willing.

She just hopes she's able.

Waverly rests her head against the back of the couch and Nicole's struck by the urge to tug a blanket up over her, to tuck it in tight under her chin and just cradle her close and let her sleep, to make her safe. Always.

"Curtis knew," Waverly says. "He knew about the curse and the revenants and about Purgatory." She thinks of the message her uncle left her, the clues he was so sure only she would be able to suss out, the duty her trusted her with. Keeper of the bones.

That used to be so much less… ironic.

It's weird for her now, looking back on it all, on the way she _missed_ so much. She knows all about the Triangle and she can tell you the backstories and histories and psychoanalysis of most every revenant in town. But she never got it then, she never saw her aunt and uncle for what they were, the flip sides of the same cursed coin.

"Curtis was the one who taught me to shoot," she says. "And Gus was the one who tried to stop him. She didn't want me to be… _that_. She thought it would just make it harder."

 _Another Earp with a gun. Just what this town needs. Just what this_ family _needs. Don't you think the guns and the girls have done_ enough?

"But what if…" Nicole sets her mug down on the two-by-four, trying to think of the right way, the least _painful_ way to put this. "Willa was gone and Wynonna was still alive but what if something happened? You'd be the heir. That was always who you were."

Waverly nods and shrugs, her shoulders brushing back against the couch. "Maybe it was," she says. "But Gus didn't want that for me. She didn't want me… she thought I could have something better."

Waverly's watching the steam slowly fade from her mug, watching it boil down to nothing, a cup once warm now gone cold, the last gasps of it floating away right in front of her. She's caught up in it, in the rising and twirling and dancing tendrils of it in the homestead air that - _this_ time - she really isn't looking at Nicole and this time she really doesn't see it.

That little bit of that joy in Nicole's eyes, flickering and fading like the steam.

"I talked to one of the counselors about it," Waverly says. "About Wynonna and daddy and the shooting and Gus and… I tried explaining it without, you know, mentioning demons and a curse and a magic gun." She laughs a little, hearing just how silly that sounds when you say it out loud as she stretches out, her knees slipping free from under the sweatshirt.

"Yeah," Nicole says, pulling her legs just a little closer. "Somethings are kinda hard to explain to someone who just… can't get them."

Waverly nods, turning in her seat to face Nicole, the perimeter widening just a bit. "He said it was a classic case," she says. "Gus didn't want to deal with who I was, with _what_ I was, by history or experience or blood, it didn't matter."

No, Nicole thinks, it never does.

"He called it willful ignorance," Waverly says, remembering how much she enjoyed hearing Gus be called ignorant, even if it was behind closed doors and never to be repeated. "Fancy talk for denial."

"Sounds like," Nicole says. She tucks her feet underneath her, the arm rest on her end jabbing into her ribs. She knows a little about denial, a bit about so many nice _boys_ and a bit about grandkids and not just a little about not in _my_ house cause if I don't see it…

It's not quite the same thing as Waverly, she knows. Waverly's was life and death (and a few more lives and a few more deaths) and hers was just… love.

 _Just_.

"Gus wanted me to be safe, that's all," Waverly says. "Willa was dead and Wynonna was gone and if she could keep me off the roads either of them went on…" She smooths her hands down the front of the sweatshirt, tugging at the wrinkles. " _She_ couldn't get through to me so she thought maybe the shrinks might."

"She thought they could _change_ you."

Maybe, Nicole thinks, it was more the same thing than she'd thought.

There's an edge to Nicole's voice that Waverly _hears_ but doesn't _understand_ , one she _can't_ and Nicole knows that. She knows she hasn't told her and she knows _that_ isn't Waverly's fault, just like it isn't her fault that growing up an Earp in Purgatory means a few more layers to who you are beyond who you love.

"She thought it was for the best," Waverly says, a slow ripple of caution (and confusion) running through her voice. She notices the way Nicole's eyes flare at _that_ \- she can't _help_ noticing - but Waverly also sees the way Nicole waits, the ways she holds back and doesn't jump in, the way she gives her space, as always, and the chance to finish. "Gus thought no heir and no curse meant no pain. I could be nor…" Waverly pauses, the word sounding wrong even if she doesn't know why. "I could be _whatever_ I _wanted_ ," she course corrects. "I could love and not be like my sister."

The 'either of them' goes unsaid.

It's not the only thing that does.

Nicole sits for a minute, until the stiff back of the couch that she's pressing against - harder and harder - gets to be a little too much. She sits up then, collecting her mug from the table and stands. "I'm gonna get a… refill," she says, waving the mug and ignoring the 'but you _hate_ it and you didn't finish _that_ one' look on Waverly's face. "And maybe I'll, um, get a couple of those cookies? You want anything?"

It's abrupt and not just in the way Nicole's already heading for the kitchen before Waverly can even shake her head 'no.' She watches from the couch as Nicole pads across the room before disappearing from sight and Waverly doesn't _want_ to, but she can't _help_ thinking it.

Maybe the Witch is still outside and maybe they're still trapped.

But that's just a storm and a closed door. That's not _nearly_ enough to keep anyone from leaving.


	6. Chapter 6

_**A/N: Just to answer a couple questions I got - this is set sometime after Willa comes back and the scene in the barn, but before the party and the finale (I know that's vague). And no, they haven't hit any of the big milestones yet, but that could change...**_

Nicole roots through drawers and she pokes through cabinets. She checks the fridge and behind the toaster, but no matter where she looks can't find it.

Whatever it is.

She searches and she searches as Waverly watches her from the living room side of the counter, keeping that two and a half feet of wood and formica, littered with empty glasses rimmed with whiskey stains, dirty plates, and a couple stacks of junk mail high enough to get lost in - housekeeping a la Wynonna - between them at all times. It's like she's afraid to get closer and Nicole doesn't really think she's _afraid_ , not of _her_ , but thinking isn't _feeling_ and she can't help _but_ feel like she's terrifying Waverly right out of… whatever it is they are.

Crashing through drawer after drawer on some blind treasure hunt with no end in sight is probably not helping with _that_.

Nicole's not even sure what she's looking for, and _no_ , that is not a metaphor or a euphemism or any kind of statement on her life in general. She knows, in _that_ regard, _exactly_ what she's looking for and - safe distance and dirty plates and two and a half feet aside - she thinks… she _knows_ … that she's found it.

She's found _her_.

But like wanting and doing and thinking and feeling, Nicole knows that finding and _keeping_ don't always walk together and even though she knows she's found _her_ , in this moment, in this kitchen with the whistling kettle going ignored again and the open package of butter cookies sitting there unattended on the counter and Waverly watching from that safe distance?

Nicole's not entirely sure _finding_ really matters much at all.

There's another drawer - one in a seemingly endless line of 'another drawer's - a long and narrow one with a cracked handle, next to the stove, and Nicole pulls and pulls but it stays shut, locking her out and holding its secrets at bay as it jiggles in place. With every pull - every _yank_ that's almost a tear or a rip or a _break_ \- she can hear the wood creaking and she pulls on it, again and again, but nothing gives.

"You have to wiggle it," Waverly says, the first words she's uttered since Nicole left the living room and even just the sound of her voice soothes something in her and _dammit,_ that can't be _right_ , that can't be _yet_ , it's too soon and it's too easy and it's too much. "It jammed years ago, when I was a kid and daddy always said he'd fix it but he…" Waverly rests her hands on the counter and stares at the closest glass, her gaze sort of distant and lost. "Side to side and then pull," she says, softly. "That should do it."

Nicole hesitates, her hand flexing around the handle and there's this… urge… bubbling up inside to just pack it in, to give up the hunt and cross the room and lean over that counter and take ahold of _Waverly_ and not some dumb fucking _drawer_ she knows doesn't hold anything even close to what she's looking for.

She might not know what that _is_ , not _really_ , but she knows it's not there, it's not hiding behind the cracked handle and the stuck wood and she _knows_ she's got a better chance of finding _something_ over _there_ \- with _her_ \- but as fast as that urge comes hiccuping to the surface, it dissipates, dissolving back into the empty it came from because she knows Waverly's just humoring her, she's just riding out the crazy - riding _alongside_ it - cause that's what Waverly does, that's how you survive in Purgatory, even when you don't know what's going on or what's really wrong.

And _that's_ just it. Nicole doesn't know either. She doesn't know what's wrong, not _exactly_ , and it _has_ to be _exact_ , it has to be specific and precise. She's a cop, she lives in the details, not in the margins and yeah, she's got an _idea_ but as long as it stays _just_ an idea… well… she can't fix an _idea,_ but she _needs_ to, she needs to do something because that's how she works, that's how Nicole deals.

She does.

She _did_ when she was seven and her parents spent most every night yelling and screaming and _breaking_ and so Nicole woke up most every morning and she went to school and _did_. She _did_ knock over a desk and she _did_ tear the cover off her math textbook and she _did_ break Ryan Grace's nose at recess with a well placed heater of a basketball pass and yes, it was totally an accident and no, it had nothing to do with him tripping her on the way to lunch and sure, she promised to try out for the team when she was older.

She _did_ when she twelve and her mother caught her older sister Lindsay with a boy - a _naked_ one - in her room, in the middle of the night, and Nicole snuck out and threw rocks at his car, parked two streets over and behind a gas station. And she did _again_ when _she_ was sixteen and her mother caught _her_ with a _girl_ (on the couch) (in broad daylight) (holding _hands_ ) and she went to school the next day and she _did_ skip class and then skipped another and she _did_ end up late for basketball practice cause she was busy busting Ryan Grace's nose ( _again_ ) when she _did_ catch him putting the moves on _her_ girl.

But sometimes the did was more about the did _not_. Nicole did _not_ ever speak to that girl again, not after she watched her worry over Ryan's nose and not after she listened to her yell and scream and call her a 'bitch' and 'a phase' and a 'fucking experiment', even if there'd never been any of _that_ and there never would have been cause Nicole did not do _that_ , not unless she was sure, not unless she _knew_.

Like she does now.

But now… well… now she doesn't even remember that girl's name (Louisa) or the way that girl's hand felt in hers (cold and small and not a fit at all) or the way that girl's lip gloss tasted on her tongue (watermelon.)

Nicole doesn't remember that at all and there's a lot of things she doesn't remember just as well.

She _does_ remember that the doing - all of it - it didn't make anything right or even all that much better (sometimes even worse) but it did make it… tolerable… it made it bearable, liveable, made it so she could get through, even if only for a few minutes, until she ran out of rocks to chuck or the class she wasn't in was done or until Ryan stopped bleeding. And Nicole remembers that she came here - to Purgatory _and_ , today, tonight, right _now_ to _here_ \- because she was sick of tolerable and she'd had just about all the bearable she could stand and liveable wasn't so… _liveable_ … anymore.

Nicole came here to stop _doing_ and start _being_ and maybe, just _maybe_ all she needs to stop the one and start the other is right there, is standing just on the other side of that counter.

But that's a maybe and Nicole… well, she's not quite ready to trust in ' _maybe'_ just yet.

Her hand moves almost of its own will. Side to side and then pull and yup, that does the trick, the drawer snaps open, almost sliding right off the rails until Nicole bumps it with her hip to keep it in check. She glances down and she's not surprised that there's not much to it, barely enough in there to poke through. A pile of old screws and a couple batteries - one triple-a and one double-a cause why would they _match_ \- and a pocket knife, busted and rusted and most likely dull as hell, and a half gone roll of duct tape, the end of it torn in jagged cuts, like someone ripped it off with their teeth.

There are moments, fleeting ones, the ones that are filled with all the guns and all the whiskey and all the brawls and secret agents and scary monsters and drawers full of screws and tape and knives - drawers that would have been right at place in her father's garage - moments when Nicole so clearly sees all the 'dude' that comes with the Earp women, everything about the life and the world that surrounds them that is so stereotypically… _guy_ … and she can't help it, even if she _wants_ to, she can't _help_ but wonder if maybe this one, if maybe this… _relationship_ … if it would be enough, if it would be _close_ enough to make her mother happy.

No. Not _happy_. Never _that._

 _OK._

But then, in those same moments, Nicole thinks of Waverly in her Shorty's top and her Shorty's shorts and she thinks of all the thoughts that go through her mind every time she sees Waverly in them - or in _anything_ really, even her two sizes too big PPD hoodie - and Nicole knows how utterly and completely not ' _dude_ ' any of those thoughts are and she thinks of how many of the so-called men she's known that Wynonna could absolutely _kill_ \- even _without_ the gun - and well, that moment? That question, that _thought_ of her mama and what she'd want?

It passes right quick.

Nicole shuts the drawer and rests her hands against the stove, fingers drumming on the cooktop, unable to be still. "I don't…" She shakes her head and sighs and curses herself, pissed that - _again_ \- she can't just let it happen. "I don't," she says, pushing herself to try, to try _again_ , "I don't even know what I'm looking for," she says softly. "Or why. I just…"

"I get it," Waverly says and Nicole wants to believe that, she might want that more than anything _ever_ , but she doesn't know how. How can Waverly get it when _she_ doesn't? "I do the same thing," Waverly says. "Or I did… _before_."

That one word hangs there between them, like a long strip of that jagged tape, a line down their life. Before. After. They've both got one foot in each and that's got them stuck in now and neither of them seems to know how to move.

Waverly walks slowly around the counter, only halfway, taking her turn and giving a little space and distance. "Back when it was just me," she says, "before Wynonna came home and Willa came… _back_ …" Her eyes cloud, like they always do when Willa comes up and that's probably the best way either of them can think of to describe Waverly's feelings for her _other_ sister.

Cloudy.

She hops up on the counter, her legs dangling off the edge, toes just barely crossing the border, slipping just inside Nicole's bubble. "A lot of nights," she says, "I stayed with Champ… well… _he_ stayed with _me_ and he'd fall asleep and I… wouldn't… it wasn't that I couldn't, not that he snored or anything, I mean he _did_ , but that wasn't…" Waverly catches herself and ducks her head, embarrassed. "Sorry," she says. "I ramble sometimes."

"I've noticed," Nicole says, wishing desperately she could just take Waverly in her arms and give her the full long and lengthy list of everything she's ever noticed about her. She stretches out one foot, brushing her own toes against Waverly's, trying to ignore how even _that_ simplest of touches zaps sparks through her heart and catches her breath in her throat. "It's OK," she says, smiling. "It's kinda adorable."

Waverly blushes. "Wait till you've been dealing with if for like twenty years…" She says, the 'like I have' lost in the trail off as she catches herself, as she hears the implications of what she said suddenly bounding their way through her mind but Nicole doesn't seem to _mind_ , in fact she _smiles_ and _she_ blushes and Waverly feels her own skin flush again at _that_.

She's not sure, not at all, not even _remotely_ , how Nicole does this to her, or if she even knows she that does. Waverly can feel it, the charge in the air between them, like it's a solid thing, like even if she closed her eyes and held out a hand, she could still _see_ , she could see by _feel_ , following the path of the electricity as it brushes against her, the sparks dancing along her skin.

It's always like that with Nicole, even now, even when they somehow keep managing to attract and repel in equal measure. It's always _been_ like that with her, at least for Waverly. There's always been that charge, that jolt, that current of _alive_ and it's not the electricity of attraction or, at least, it's not _just_ that. Waverly knows they have _that_ \- the way she can't stop imagining what it would be like… what it _will_ be like… to be with _her_ , even _now_ , tells her that - but she's known that from the start, even before they were a _they_ , even when she was still with Champ and even when she was still _with_ Champ, even on those nights when she let her mind wander and drift and maybe she didn't quite imagine that _he_ was Nicole but…

But when she shut her eyes and she rode out whatever moments of pleasure and completion and that rush that coursed through all of her on those rare occasions when Champ managed to work just enough magic to conjure that up within her? Waverly always saw the same thing behind her eyes.

Red.

So _much_ red, beating like a heart against her lids and so, yeah, Waverly's known, she's known from the first moment she saw Nicole, from the first moment _she_ saw Nicole see _her_ , when it was right there, dancing in the deputy's eyes. Waverly knew lust when she saw it, she knew _desire_ too, but she'd never seen it like _that_ , like a hunger and not just to _have her_ , but just to _be_ , to just drink her in and swallow her down and then to do it all over again, over and over and over forever.

Waverly's lived her whole life never thinking of forever because - in her whole life - she's never gotten one. But now… _now_ , she finds herself having to _not_ think of it, not cause she hasn't had one but because it's only been a few weeks of a few nights (and days) (and Nedley's couch) (and the barn) of kisses and touches that haven't even gone as far as Champ's did on their _first date_ and yeah, Willa knows but Wynonna _doesn't_ (which makes her the only one) and it can't be forever until she does, but no matter how much Waverly tries not to… _God…_ she can _see_ it.

Most of the time. Except times like… well… now.

Times when it's cloudy.

But dammit… she's _tired_ of cloudy.

Waverly shuffles around on the counter, drawing closer, breathing a little easier when Nicole doesn't pull back and maybe, she thinks, just _maybe_ , this time they can take the two steps forward without the one step back.

"When Champ would fall asleep," she says, "I'd get online. And I would just… look. I didn't know what for or why or if I'd even know it when I found it, but I _looked_. I looked _everywhere_."

Nicole nods and she doesn't say anything but there's this spark - the _other_ kind - behind her eyes and Waverly takes that as a good sign (she'll take any she can get) and soldiers on.

"It was like the rabbit hole in Alice," she says. "I'd start out looking for something about Greece or Rome or wherever…" Wherever Wynonna was, she thinks, but doesn't say. "And then I'd just fall and stumble and slide my way down the hole and next thing I knew it was four in the morning and Champ was still snoring and I didn't know quite how to find my way back."

"And sometimes you didn't really want to."

Waverly's not sure if Nicole's talking about her or her _self_ , but, in the end, it doesn't really make much difference, does it?

"No," she says. "I couldn't be out there… wherever _that_ was." She frowns a little, the clouds rolling in again and Nicole doesn't know everything, not about Waverly and not about her family and their history with - and _without_ \- each other, but she knows enough, enough to know that 'out there' was never really a 'where', it was always a 'who.' "I was here," Waverly says, "and I didn't know how or _if_ I could ever change that."

Nicole can tell Waverly wishes she had, wishes she'd changed that, but - selfishly - _she's_ so very glad she never did.

Waverly slides down off the counter, dropping her whole self inside the bubble. "I looked," she says. "I looked and I looked and I _looked_ … because I knew I'd never find. And that was easier."

There's a second, a tiny moment, when Nicole presses herself back against the drawer, when she feels that cracked handle pressing against her hip and she wants… _needs_ … to crawl inside that drawer, to hide behind the tape, to dive under the pile of screws, to hold up that busted and rusted dull-ass knife like a fucking sword.

And then she sees Waverly there - she _sees_ her - and yeah, Nicole can see _it_ too.

"I look," Waverly says. "I look all the time. I've been looking since the moment we met. I've been looking for every reason, the ones I know make sense and the ones I whip up in my mind like… like the fucking Witch… every reason you'll _go_."

She doesn't say 'because everyone always does' but Nicole hears it just the same.

"I look…" Nicole says. She hangs her head and grits her teeth and wonders just why it is she can stare down a guy with a gun or a demon back from hell or fucking _Dolls_ but Waverly Earp scares - _terrifies_ \- her. "I look for every way people are going to disappoint me, let me down, try to… keep me from being what… _who_ … I am."

 _She_ doesn't say like 'turning out not to be what… _who..._ they thought they were' _or_ 'giving into what other people want' _or_ 'not telling your sister that we're not _best friends_ ' (and maybe Waverly just _thinks_ that last one all on her own) but Waverly hears them all just the same.

Waverly scoots over, moving past Nicole to a set of three stacked drawers under the sink, sliding the bottom most one open with her foot. "I don't want that to be us," she says, kneeling down and scooping a clear bottle out of the drawer. "I don't want us to be one of those couples that make their own drama and keep fucking things up and making messes when they could solve it all just by…"

"Talking?"

Waverly nods. "Yeah. We've been doing a lot of that, which is good," she says. "But we keep talking ourselves right up to the edge and then…" She kicks the drawer shut. "I want to," she says. "I want to talk right up to the edge and _over_ it. I want to talk and talk and talk until we've talked about it all but… _fuck_ … I want so much more than _just_ talk."

Nicole likes more. She likes the sound of it and the idea of it and she likes thinking that maybe they're actually _already_ more.

She watches as Waverly grabs up their tea mugs, topping them off from the kettle before handing her one and keeping the other. She unscrews the cap off the bottle and pours a liberal helping of whatever it is (is that _peppermint_ ) into their mugs, mumbling something about 'liquid courage' and 'learning from Wynonna' as she does.

Waverly moves back in front of her, any semblance of space and distance absolutely gone. "I think," she says, pausing for a moment to hunt for the words, for the _right_ ones, but they're not there - those perfect words - and they wouldn't be _her_ anyway. "I think I can stop looking cause I think I've finally _found_ and I think maybe you have too." Nicole nods (even though Waverly didn't _ask_ ) and Waves feels like maybe her heart can start again. "So, maybe, if we want _more_ … we ought to start looking for _that_ ," she says. She sighs and tips her mug back, downing it in one gulp. "Maybe we should start looking _together_."

Nicole stares down at the mug in her hand for a long moment and OK, maybe Waverly was wrong, maybe her heart shouldn't have started but then Waverly watches as Nicole sets the mug down and then she takes Waverly's hands in hers (and what do you know? Warm and soft and a _perfect_ fit) and kisses her, so softly and so sweetly and it feels like goodbye and hello all at once and Waverly doesn't know what to think.

"I hate tea," Nicole says, breaking the kiss and tipping their heads together, her eyes squeezed shut but Waverly's are wide open. "I hate tea, but I love _you_ and so, yeah," she says. "I think looking together sounds like just about the best plan ever."

Nicole looked in drawers and she checked cabinets and behind the fridge and the toaster. But she should have known. What she was looking for?

Right there all along.


	7. Chapter 7

They do it, at first - _again_ \- just like Nicole said. Opposite ends of the couch, sipping tea and talking.

Except…

Except that _this_ time's a little _different_. They're at opposite ends, yes, but no one is curled up and in and _away_. There's legs stretched out between them (Waverly's over Nicole's cause, let's be real, Nicole works out and _calves)_ (not that Waverly is complaining _at all_ ) and every once in a while, Waverly's hands - warm from her mug - slip under the blanket and run along Nicole's ankle or just a little ways up those calves and that shudder that she feels rippling through her girlfriend's legs _and_ that slow way her eyes flutter shut _and_ the way Nicole gently chews on her bottom lip, like she's trying to hold something in?

Totally from the heat.

 _Totally._

Nicole's skipped the tea this time too, cause, you know, she _hates_ it. But she loves _her._

And no, they haven't talked about _that_ , not _yet_ , but not talking doesn't mean not _thinking_ and, really, Waverly can barely think of much else. Except for, _maybe_ , saying it _back_ but she's not quite ready and, honestly, she's not sure _Nicole_ was ready (she looked almost as surprised that she said it as Waverly was to hear it) but she hasn't taken it back (like Waves would _let_ her.)

And it isn't that Waverly doesn't feel it because she _does_ , she _has_ , like for a while now even if she wasn't quite sure, at first, what it was. It wasn't something she recognized, not like the desire (she knew that _immediately_ , even if she tried to ignore it, just for a bit) cause it was nothing like what she'd felt for Champ and she'd always _said_ that was love.

It had to be, right? What the hell else could have compelled her to stay with _him_ as long as she did if it _wasn't_ love?

But now… well… _now_ Waverly knows _better_ and she knows that whatever it was she felt for Champ, it wasn't this, it wasn't _love_ (a very strong _like_ , maybe, with a dash of 'not any better options') and, if she's being honest? That scares her a little.

Waverly's realizing ( _realized_ ) that Nicole's not just the first _woman_ she's ever loved.

Nicole's the first _anyone_. The first anyone she's loved like _that_ , anyway, cause she _does_ love her sister… _sisters…_ even if neither of them has made that particularly easy and yes, she's _well_ aware that she can't really hold all those years she was missing against Willa (much) but there's still the matter of all the years _before_. So, maybe, if Waverly's going just a little slow, if she's holding off just a… _smidge_ … it makes sense, given her track record with love.

But make no mistake, she _does_ feel it and yeah, it's _great_ , it's _wonderful_ , it's _amazeballs_ (minus, you know, the _balls_ ) but, at the same time, it's terrifying and it's weird and it's different and new and, until just recently, there'd been absolutely _no_ new in Waverly's life in like… _forever_ … and _most_ of the new _new_ she's been dealing with isn't exactly… _good_.

You know, demons and Witches and _witches_ and not so dead sisters and not so gone ones, too.

But Nicole is different and Waverly kinda thinks that maybe it's a tradeoff, you know? You get a demon or two (or seventy-something) and a witch and an _un_ dead gunslinger and a _not_ dead sister and a shadowy government agency and it's repressed representative (and, _shit_ , that's so many _more_ 'ands' than she thought) and, in exchange?

One good sister back from the world and one great, wonderful, _amazing_ woman who just might change _everything_ (and already _has_ ) and yeah, that's a deal Waverly would make any day of the week, but… still… even though it's great and she's got _no_ doubts (none) (nada) (zip, zilch, _zero_ ), she still thinks maybe she'll keep those three little words to herself for a bit.

Until, you know, she _blurts_ it out (not that Waverly ever does _that_ ), probably in the middle of some random discussion like the one they had at the station the other day about the best kinds of hot chocolate (Nicole was pro tiny marshmallows and Waverly and Dolls were _not_ and Wynonna didn't care as long as 'there's whiskey in it, not particular about the kind') or they're trying to talk Doc out of leaving again (Nicole threatened to have his car impounded and he said he'd get a horse and she said she'd impound that _too_ ) or, you know, someone _else_ comes back from the dead.

Or something like that.

So, no, no (more) 'I love you's' (yet) (the day is young) and no tea for Nicole - a can of coke from the fridge instead - and more tangled legs and soft blankets and fewer secrets and no more fucking riddles about who's looking for _what_ in _where_ and oh, yeah, Waverly's now _empty_ mystery bottle, clutched in Nicole's hand as she take a curious (and slightly nervous cause Purgatory and weird bottles and yeah, that's not usually a good combo) sniff.

"Schnapps," Nicole says, eyeing Waverly over the bottle as she runs it under her nose, taking another sniff. " _Peppermint_ ," she says and there's this smile just starting to tug at the corner of her lips (Waverly hasn't named it - _yet_ \- but it just _screams_ 'could you _be_ any cuter') and it's one she hasn't seen in a bit and, until right this very moment, Waverly hadn't realized how much she missed it. "You got your liquid courage from peppermint _schnapps_."

"Hey!" Waverly nudges her in the leg with her toes. "I happen to _like_ schnapps," she says, letting her foot linger against Nicole's calf maybe a moment (or two) longer than a _nudge_ might suggest. "And don't you make fun," she says, and yes, foot lingering and now rubbing, gently, sliding up Nicole's leg and oh, there's the hem of her sleep shorts… "Or I won't share. No schnapps or bubblegum sake for you _and_ I won't teach you how to make my world famous watermelon whiskey cocktail."

Yes, Waverly is aware - even before Nicole's lips purse in disgust - that _that_ is something… _less_ … than a _real_ threat.

"World famous?" Nicole asks, her own hand slipping under the blanket and catching Waverly's foot as it slide up along her thigh. "Really?"

Waverly shrugs, keeping her expression neutral as Nicole doesn't push her foot away and, in fact, only guides it higher and OK, _that's_ new. "Fine," she says, " _Purgatory_ famous but it's the _hit_ of the Summer Festival _every_ year." Nicole's hand stops moving, just resting along the smooth skin of Waverly's leg, just above her ankle, fingers tracing light circles and the _touch_ isn't new, but something about it - something about it _after_ those _words_ \- does something to Waves she can't quite explain.

But she likes it. Like, _a lot_.

Nicole laughs and it might be the first real one Waverly's heard in a while (she knows a 'while' is only a few hours but it feels so much _longer_ ) and it warms her in a way all the tea and schnapps in the world could never manage.

"Peppermint and bubblegum and watermelon," Nicole lists off. She shifts under the blanket, slipping one leg out and then over Waverly's. "You do realize liquor is not _supposed_ to taste like candy, right?"

Waverly shakes her head. "And here I had such hopes for you," she says, "but you're just another one of _them_."

Nicole's fingers still for a moment on her leg and her eyes darken and Waverly knows _those_ signs and she quickly runs it all on replay, trying to find her misstep, her mistake, the thing that she did ( _again)_ to mess it all up.

 _One of_ them _._

Oh. _Oh._

"I'm so _sorry_ ," Waverly says, clamping a hand around Nicole's leg (and not to keep her from running) (not _just_ ) her eyes squeezing shut as she curses herself in her head. "I meant a booze snob not a… you know… a…"

 _Shit. Shit shit fucking shit._

"A unicorn?"

Waverly's eyes pop open and yup, Nicole's still there (iron grip on the leg and all) but her eyes, they're not dark anymore, they're clear and her smile's back and her fingers are moving again, tracing their way along Waverly's calf. "It's OK," she says. "I know you didn't mean… _that_ ," she says, but there's a hesitation, a pause, like just before a 'but' and then... "Besides," Nicole says slowly, "you're one of… _them_ … too, right?"

Waverly knows Nicole doesn't mean a booze snob and she nods (maybe a little faster than she should) even though, now that she thinks about it, _that_ part of _this_ is maybe the one thing she _hasn't_ overthought but now…well, _now_ , she's not gonna be able to think of anything _else._

And… _shit_ … ( _again_ )... she doesn't _know_ , she's never thought about _it_ , like is this _just_ a Nicole thing or is it an _every_ woman thing, like is she gonna start checking girls out on the street or what if an attractive woman comes into Shorty's - you know, once they manage to get it back from Bobo (cause they _will_ ) - and starts flirting with her… wait… will _she_ , will she flirt, will she know, like… gaydar… oh _God,_ does she _ping_ now and what does _that_ mean -

"Waves," there's a gentle pressure on her leg as Nicole squeezes and Waverly snaps back to reality, to the _here_ and the _now_ and her girlfriend's just staring at her with this unreadable look on her face. "You can breathe, baby," Nicole says. "I was kidding."

Waverly shakes her head (again, with the _too quickly_.) "No," she says. "It's _fine_ , I'm _fine_ , everything's…"

"Fine?"

So _not_ fine. " _Dammit_ ," Waverly mutters, hiding her face in her hands. "I'm _so_ sorry," she says through her fingers. "I just… it's all so… and I never even… it was always… _boys_ … and then there was… _you_ … and so _not_ a boy… and I…" She shakes her head again. "I'm _so_ sorry," she says.

 _Again_.

Nicole sets the bottle down on the table and extracts her legs so she can slip off the couch and oh - here it is, the moment, the one Waverly's been waiting for, the one she was _looking_ for and isn't that just _so_ like her, cause she couldn't _find_ it so she _made_ it, she made it _happen_ \- and now Nicole's gonna go, she's gonna leave, she's gonna walk right out the front door.

 _Shit_

(Did she already say _that_?)

Waverly's about five seconds from reminding her that she'll never make it, she'll never survive out in the Witch ('remember Bailey', she'll say) when she feels Nicole drop back down onto the couch (on _her_ end, like _there,_ like _right there_ ) and then there's an arm around her, tugging her close and she shifts, scooting herself off the couch and onto Nicole, straddling her lap and, well… _this_ is good.

Cause it's gonna be kinda hard for her to leave. You know, from this _position_.

"I was twelve," Nicole says and Waverly nods cause, well, she knows Nicole was twelve, so was she - at one point, though some might argue that point is, you know, _now_ or, at least, every time she's around _Nicole_ \- and she's not sure at all where _this_ is going, so nodding seems safe.. "I was twelve," Nicole repeats, "the first time I kissed a girl."

Oh. _That's_ where.

Nicole reaches up and tucks an errant strand of hair behind Waverly's ear, letting her hand linger, fingers stroking gently against cheek. "There was this party."

"All _great_ stories start with those four words," Waverly says and Nicole laughs and nods.

Even if she's not entirely sure how _great_ this story is.

"It was at this guy's house," she says. "His name was Ryan," and there's those lips of disgust again. "He was super popular and, objectively, cute, but not _hot_ or even handsome and maybe someday I'll tell you about the two times I broke his nose."

She only _meant_ to do it once.

It - the party - was a pool party and Nicole was the only girl there _not_ in a bikini. "I wasn't really equipped for one then," she says, "and yes, I realize that's different _now_ and yes, before you ask, I do own… a _few_ … and, yes, if you play your cards right _and_ don't ever make me drink anything bubblegum, you might even get to see me in one or two of them."

There's a moment when Waverly almost - as in she's so _fucking close_ and the words are practically dancing on her tongue - says 'or _out_ of them' and _God_ , as if she _needed_ more evidence that she spent _way_ too much time with Champ.

The party was like most twelve year old parties, or at least the ones in the days before Snapchat. There were lots of shy glances and a few stammering attempts at flirting that never really got past the 'uhhhh… _hi_ ' stage and most of the girls were secretly embarrassed by their bodies (or their _lack_ of one) and almost all the boys looked like they'd done got themselves smacked by puberty like a Tyson right hook they hadn't quite shaken off yet.

In short, it was the closest thing to hell Nicole could ever imagine. Until, you know, _Purgatory_.

"It started to rain," she says, "and then the lightning came and we all had to get out of the pool and _no one_ wanted to do that cause at least in the water you were kinda… hidden, you know?"

Waverly nods. She might know a thing or two about hiding.

"Ryan had this covered deck," Nicole says. Her hands have found their way to Waverly's hips, her thumbs slipping just up and just over the hem of her girlfriend's shorts, rubbing tiny circles against Waverly's skin. "So, we all ran for the house and sat in a big circle on the deck, just waiting out the storm."

That sounds a bit… _familiar_.

To this day, Nicole doesn't remember who said it, who had the oh _so_ bright idea to play spin the bottle (you know, in daylight, with Ryan's parents just on the other side of the screen door and, again, _in daylight_ ) though, if she had to guess?

"Nicole R.," she says. "There were two of us. I was Nicole H. and she was Nicole R. and other than the names, it was easy to tell us apart." Nicole's hands slide up, skirting under Waverly's shirt, slipping around until they're resting on the small of her back and Waverly isn't even sure Nicole's noticed she's doing it and she's certainly not going to _tell_ her.

She might _stop_.

If Nicole has noticed, she doesn't show it, she just keeps on keeping on. "I was short," she says, "and everything was kinda… _stumpy_." She frowns, just a little, her grip tightening almost imperceptibly. "That was the word my mother used, at least."

Family. Can't live with 'em, _can_ trust them to make you feel even _worse_ about every little thing.

Nicole - _R_ , the _other_ one - was _not_ stumpy. She was tall and blonde and all legs and boobs and legs and perfect eyebrows and did she mention _legs_?

"She had the most obvious crush _ever_ on Ryan," Nicole says. "But she could never even get him to look at her, but now… she had him _trapped_. His buddies were all for it cause, well, for most of them this was probably the _only_ shot they had at kissing a girl, so he couldn't exactly back out."

Waverly's gotta hand it to Nicole - R, not H - it was a good plan, a solid plan, the kinda thing Wynonna might have come up with if, you know, she'd ever had any trouble (even _after_ ) getting boys to kiss her.

"I didn't even know people actually played spin the bottle," Waverly says. Her hands are in her lap, pressed gently against Nicole's stomach and she can feel the gentle rise and fall of her girlfriend's every breath. "I thought it was just some bullshit parents told their kids about to make it sound like they'd had some wild youth."

I _kissed_ a boy and we weren't _dating_ so I know all about the crazy _shit_ you youngins get up to and they'll be none of _that_ under my _roof_ , Miss Waverly.

"Right?" Nicole says. "It just seemed so stupid and childish and ridiculous and of _course_ I wanted to play _so_ bad cause… well… _stumpy_."

Sometimes, when it comes to _wanting_ , teenage boys have _nothing_ on teenage girls.

It started slow - the game - with errant spins that didn't land on anyone and chaste kisses that wouldn't have looked out of place between brothers and sisters and the bottle kept getting closer and closer and Nicole kept wondering and wondering.

Who? Who would it land on? And who did she _want_ it to land on?

"It was Nicole R.'s spin before mine," she says, not seeming to notice the way Waverly shifts on her lap when two of her fingers dip just under the waistband of her shorts, not anywhere… you know… _yet_ , but _still_ … "She whipped that thing around and it went and it went and it _went_ and in the end…"

In the end, Nicole _R_. spun Nicole _H_. and the rest was history. Except…

"I didn't want to kiss her," Nicole says. "Like no way, no how, no _chance_." She _does_ notice the way Waverly keeps - discreetly - trying to tug her shirt up, slowly, bit by bit, exposing just the tiniest bit of skin. She notices, but doesn't do anything about it.

She might _stop_.

"She was a _girl_ ," Nicole says. "And I liked _boys_. I _knew_ I liked boys and I'd _always_ liked boys, you know, since I was _eleven_ and realized they didn't _all_ have cooties."

Ryan had cooties. Literally. Three STDs his senior year and Nicole heard Nicole R. in the locker room one day thanking God that she'd never actually… you _know_.

"I don't think she wanted to kiss me either," she says, hoping Waverly doesn't notice the slight hitch in her voice as a little more of her stomach comes into view - and _feel_ (and thank _God_ she did her crunches last night while Waverly was asleep) - "and she probably wouldn't have, if Ryan and all his dipshit friends hadn't made such a big deal out of it."

The only thing better than kissing a teenage girl when you're a teenage boy? Two teenage girls kissing _each other_.

Nicole wasn't expecting it - the kiss or what came _next_ \- but suddenly there had been lips on hers. They were soft and they were gentle and they had no idea what the _fuck_ they were doing but that was almost... incidental (cause, really, it wasn't like hers knew either)... and then, just like that, it was over.

"They cheered," she says. "Ryan and his friends. They cheered and they whooped and they hollered and Nicole R. smiled like she'd won the lottery and a couple of the other girls gave her such _dirty_ looks cause now _they_ were gonna have to do it too."

Waverly's hands glide under Nicole's shirt - she's finally given up on discreet, it was taking too long - but even with her hands so… occupied… she's _heard_ all of it and she's staring down at her girlfriend like her every word, even the tiniest ones, _matters_ and, for Nicole, _that's_ new and as much as she likes where those hands seemed headed?

She thinks she likes _that_ even more.

"What about you?" Waverly asks. "They were giving her dirty looks. What were you doing?"

"Hoping that when they spun they landed on me too?" Nicole laughs and Waverly pinches her sides, making a mental note that _that_ causes hips to buck and _that's_ something to remember. "I really wasn't doing much of anything," Nicole says. "I wasn't even thinking, really. I just remember that it felt… like… like _math_."

" _Math_?"

Nicole nods, her own hands moving again, still not _anywhere_ , except maybe those dimples right at the base of Waverly's back and that's a pretty good 'not anywhere' to be.

"I sucked at math, even when I was twelve," she says. "I could write an essay in like an hour and I could tell you the name of every President, in _order_ , and I was the only one who did the dissections right in science class."

Waverly hated dissection day. If, back then, she'd known some of the shit she'd see on a near daily basis _now_? She'd have _aced_ that thing.

Nicole shifts under her and Waverly adjust her legs, tightening them around the other woman's hips and… _God_ … how had she and Champ spent all that time together touching and rubbing and… _ugh_ … and none of it had done anything to her that even came close to what the feeling of Nicole's hips against her thighs does?

How had she not _known_?

"My math homework… it made me want to drink," Nicole says. "Like, I probably would've even gone for bubblegum sake want to drink." Waverly pinches her again and, yup, there's those bucking hips and oh, she's _so_ gonna use _that_ move. "When I would finally figure out a problem, it was like… this relief would wash over me and I could breathe again," she says. "And then, inevitably, there'd be _another_ one and there'd be this sense of dread and my stomach would tighten and my fingers would twitch and my heart would race."

Waverly spares a quick glance down, drinking in the briefest sight of her girlfriend's skin under her shirt and under _her_ fingers and yeah, she knows _that_ feeling.

"Kissing a girl was like that," Nicole says, "even with the dread, at least at first, cause I knew… as right as it was and as _me_ as it was…"

"It wasn't going to be that way for everyone," Waverly says watching as her girlfriend slowly nods. "Your mom?" Another nod. "But you got over it, right? The dread?"

One more nod.

"Yeah," Nicole says. "The _second_ time I ever kissed you."

Waverly's hands still against Nicole's skin and that whole air rushing out of the room thing is happening and she doesn't know what to say ( _yes_ , she _does_ , but she _can't_ , not _yet_ ) and she hopes that somehow Nicole sees it, that somehow she feels it, like maybe there's telepathy or something (it _is_ Purgatory) so even if she can't _say_ it…

"It's OK," Nicole whispers, shifting up on the couch so she and Waverly are face to face, her hands slipping up to cup Waverly's cheeks. "I _know_."

She knows.

She _knows_? Shit… telepathy?

"I know you're scared and I know you're confused," Nicole says.

Oh. She knows _that_. Not quite what Waverly was hoping for, but still…

"I know what it's like to start wondering and trying to figure it all out," Nicole says. "And at least when I went through it I didn't have monsters and back from the dead sisters and… everything that you have to deal with." She tips her forehead against Waverly's, slipping her arms down and around her. "So, it doesn't matter to me if you're a unicorn or if you're more of a horse with a horn that kinda comes and goes or if you're more of a… pony… with some dreams of being a horse…"

Waverly tips her head back. "A pony?"

"I don't _know_ ," Nicole mutters. "I got caught up in the unicorn thing and I couldn't figure a graceful way out of it so I just kept going, you know, hoping I'd stumble onto something cause that always seems to work for you and -"

And _math_.

Waverly's kiss is different, so much different than Nicole R.'s and _this one_ is so much different than the one from the kitchen and so much different from the ones in the barn or on Nedley's couch or in the hallway outside the Black Badge office or _any_ of the others.

Those were good. Those were _great_.

This… this is _them_.

Waverly breaks the kiss and Nicole knows she looks kinda silly cause her eyes are still shut and she _can't_ open them (if she _sees_ Waverly right _now_ she can't be held responsible for what she might do) and she can't speak and she's just trying to get her breath back and -

"I love you."

And it's _gone_. _Again_.

Nicole does open her eyes then and Waverly's still there, they're _both_ still there and so are those words - the ones she didn't know if she'd _ever_ hear from _anyone_ \- and they're _right there_ , hanging between them and _that's_ new too, that there's something between them and it isn't something secret or wrong or potentially world ending (like, for _real_ world ending) and Nicole doesn't know what to say.

( _Yes_ , she _does_.)

(And she _can_.)

"I love you too."

And Waverly smiles and that's _nothing_ like _math_ or pretty much anything else, _ever_ and yes, there's a Witch outside and yes, she's whipping up quite a mess and Nicole's quite _sure_ she's not done with them just yet. But that's alright, she's grown kind of fond of storms.

They've been pretty good to her.


	8. Chapter 8

She said it.

She said _it_. No, not _it_. She said _them_ , those words, the _three_ of them. I and love and you and, really, Waverly knows that when you say them like _that_ , all separate and individual like and with an 'and' between them, and not smushed together in a jumbled rush that just comes tumbling out of your mouth when you're _totally_ least expecting it, well, when you say them like _that_ , they're just words.

But then there's the _other_ way.

 _That_ way is the way you say them when they're not all individual and they're not all separate, when they're absolutely _together_ cause you can't imagine them any other way, you can't even _begin_ to fathom each word _not_ following the other. When the 'I' has gotta come first cause it's all about _you_ and it's all about that feeling you're _feeling_ , that bubbling and gurgling and filling and all the other -ing's _thing_ that's spilling over inside you and _that_ means the 'love' _has_ to come next cause that's the _only_ word for it even if, _really_ , that word, those four little letters, that one tiny syllable, that one so so _so_ short utterance (that seems so so _so_ long, forever long, end of fucking _time_ long when it's finding its way out of you) doesn't even come _close_ \- like not even in the zip code or area code or _country_ code of close - to expressing that bubbling, gurgling, spilling _thing_.

And then comes the 'you'.

And don't get Waverly started on the 'you' cause, really, she could go on and on and on and _on_ about the _you_ even if, _really_ (again), talk about tiny and talk about inadequate and talk about… _insufficient_. Like there's any way, any chance, any _hope_ that one word - or many words or lots of words or _all the fucking words_ \- could ever encompass or encapsulate or… _whatever_ (she's got no other 'e' words and that's just killing the flow but you get the _point_ )... there's _no chance_ that they could do justice to _her_. Because 'you' (even after those other two words) or 'her' or 'Nicole' or 'Officer Hot' (and it should probably be with _at least_ two 't's cause, have you _seen_ her?) isn't _just_ the end of that phrase, the object of that verb, the third of those three little words.

She's so much… _more_.

And yeah, Waverly knows 'more' is a bit… anticlimactic. It's not all that poetic and it's certainly not pretty and it's not quite the deep thoughts she was having about the 'I' and the 'love' but see, _that's_ the _thing_ \- it's getting kinda hard for her to think. It's getting to be (and, really, it's _past_ getting) something of a struggle for her to put the words in their places, to follow the bouncing ball, to string them together in any way that makes _any_ sense, what with, you know, _Nicole_.

Nicole right under her, right _there_. Nicole's one hand on her hip, slipping and gripping and clutching like she's afraid Waverly's gonna float off. Nicole's other hand dancing across her back, just under her shirt, moving in ways Waverly can't predict or follow, a brush of fingertips here, a pressing and kneading and working of her flesh there, a sliding down down _down_ under the waistband of her shorts and oh, then the _other_ hand's there _too_ and there's lifting, scooting Waves up and up and _up_ and there's lips pressing lightly against the bare skin of her neck and hands down _there_ , cupping and holding and pulling her even closer (like that's _possible_ ) and yeah, thinking?

So overrated.

Even thinking about _her_.

Still… Waverly knows she said it (or them or _whatever_.) The words, the three of them, _she_ said _them_ before the lips and the hands - the one still on her ass and the one starting to move slowly down and tickling against her leg in a way that _so_ doesn't make her want to _laugh_ \- and she said them out loud _and_ to someone else _and_ not a someone else she's related to cause, you know, she said them in _that_ way…

That way you say them to someone whose fingers are trailing lightly along the soft skin of your leg, slowly daring their way further and further up your thigh and oh, _hello_ , that's the _inside_ of that thigh and um… well… yeah (and _yeah_ )... and nobody's been there in a while (nobody except Waverly herself and that's definitely not _her_ hand) and oh, that's _new_ …

"Wait," she says, she _whispers_ , almost hoping Nicole won't hear or that maybe she'll _hear_ but she'll _ignore_ , even though Waverly knows good and well that if there's one thing Nicole will _never_ do, it's ignore her. "Nicole… baby…" and _God,_ that sounded so much more like a moan, like a 'yes', like a 'don't ever stop doing _that_ , like not even long enough for food or water or sleep _ever_ ' than a plaintive cry to stop. Waverly presses her hands against Nicole's shoulders and all she really _wants_ to do is grip and squeeze and hang the hell on and ride out the storm _just like this_ , but… "Nicole, wait, Nicole… _stop_."

It's like a switch flips, Nicole's hands stilling and then they're moving again and Waverly's dropping, settling back down on her girlfriend's lap and it's almost like the world's just stopped and it takes her a moment or two - more than she'd expect - to remember to breathe but then Nicole's there, _right there_ , right with her, hands cupping her cheeks and there's this look in her eyes, this… _look_ (it's the best Waverly can do)... as she stares at her and it's like… like… like…

Nothing. No, not that it's _like_ nothing, it's that she's _got_ nothing. Waverly's got no words for it, no way to describe it, no basis for comparison, no mythical legendary perfect relationship to hold it up to as some kind of measuring stick, nothing to weigh the strength of everything she sees dancing behind Nicole's eyes against. And that makes that bubbling gurgling filling and spilling _thing_ rise up in her with power and ferocity that would put the Witch to shame but, more than that, it just reminds her, it brings it slamming home, raising it all into the kind of stark relief Waverly just can't ignore.

This is new. _New_. And Waverly's not too good with new, at least she doesn't _think_ she is, though she's not quite sure cause, really?

She's not too used to new. She lived a long long _long_ time without new, with every day being the same day - different details and different shadings and different moments but the whole, oh, the whole was _always_ the _same_ \- but now there's sisters and there's Docs and there's Dolls and there's demons and witches and monsters (oh, _my_ ) and there's Nicole and most of all?

There's _her_.

And _that_ new is the one that scares her most of all.

"Are you OK?" Nicole's talking and Waverly's realizing she's already missed half of it, but she's pretty sure she's got the drift. "I'm _so_ sorry, that was too fast. I should have known, I mean we've done _some…_ but not _that_ but you said… and I…" She hangs her head, letting her hands slide down onto Waverly's shoulders. "I'm sorry, the last thing I want to do is pressure and I don't… I don't wanna be like some… female version of Champ, you know? I don't want to make you feel like you're just… _that_."

Waverly smiles to herself, wondering if maybe she should point out that while Nicole never makes her feel like she's just anything (except maybe, sometimes, just _perfect_ ) she also makes her feel more like… _that_ … than Champ ever did. And that's not a bad thing, not _at all_.

She tucks a finger under Nicole's chin and lifts her head, pressing a soft silencing kiss to her lips before leaning back, smiling at the way Nicole's eyes stay flutteringly shut just a beat longer than they should before she starts speaking. "It's not… well… I mean..." She shakes her head at the irony - babbling Nicole and her, suddenly speechless - and tries to figure how to say it, all of it and maybe _that's_ the problem, maybe she doesn't need to say it _all_ , not at once, but she doesn't even know where to start. "It's not too fast," she says, finally, though it really _is_ but it _isn't_ too and how can she make that make sense for Nicole when she can't make heads or tails of it for _herself_ ? "It _is_ ," she says, "but it's not because of _you_ and it's not because I don't _want_ it to be fast cause, trust me, I _want_ it, I want _you_ and I want it _and_ you right _now_."

If Waverly ever wondered what confusion _looked_ like, she doesn't anymore. Confusion, thy name is Nicole. Confusion is, apparently, fucking gorgeous and damn hard to resist and why was she stopping again?

Right. _New_.

New and those words that she said and that seems - at least it does to Waverly - like _maybe_ a good place to start and, _definitely_ something they ought to talk about and it's more than just 'ought to', it _is_ that but it's a so much more too, so much more of a 'want to' than just a 'have to'. "A part of me," Waverly says, "or, you know, _several_ parts of me, really really really want to just lead you right back into the bedroom and do… you know… _things_." But, maybe, she thinks, it's better that they don't do those things just yet.

At least not until she can actually bring herself to call them something other than 'things'.

"But see," she continues, "there's other parts of me, important parts, parts that…" Her hands fidget in her lap as she trails off, fingers fumbling like her words, until Nicole takes her hands in her own and _that_ doesn't make Waverly's thoughts any less jumbled or confused but it does seem to make that confusing jumble seem just a little less scary. Until, that is, she opens her mouth again and _Godammit,_ will she ever know what's gonna come out of it _before_ she says stuff like "I did _things_ with Champ" and she has to clamp her hands around Nicole's before the other woman can pull away. "I _did_ ," Waverly says (cause, yeah, it needed _reinforcement_ ) "but I never… I didn't… those words…"

She doesn't clarify, doesn't say if she never said them or if she never meant them or if she's just realizing now that she didn't even _understand_ them, didn't really know what they meant, not until _now_ , but those are just details and those - the specifics, the exacts, the _nitty gritty_ \- they don't really matter. Waverly can see it in Nicole's eyes and she can feel it in the way Nicole's hands relax in hers. Nicole get is, she gets _her_.

One more thing Champ never quite managed to pull off.

Waverly presses on, hoping Nicole can keep right on translating her into something she can understand. "I always imagined saying it… _really_ saying it… I always thought it would make everything so much easier." Those words would be, in her mind, like a key turning a lock and the door would spring wide - safe passage for all - but Waverly's quickly coming to see that it isn't that simple, it's not quite that easy. Those words turn the key, they flip that lock, but that door?

It's a heavy son of a bitch.

"Champ said it," Waverly says, rolling herself off Nicole's lap (and she feels immediately colder for it) but she stays close, one leg draped over Nicole's, hands still clasped. "He said he loved me but not like… it was always a toss off, you know? A 'love ya' at the end of a phone call or sometimes a 'you're lucky I love you' when I'd done something to annoy him."

She sees the way Nicole's mouth twitches, can practically hear the snide comment, the biting insult she wants to fling (the one Champ probably wouldn't get) and there's a twinge that runs through her. Sometimes - not often, but sometimes - Waverly feels a bit guilty about the way they both talk about Champ, for the way she knows Nicole thinks of him that she's probably done nothing but encourage. Sometimes Waverly feels like it's an either or kinda thing, that it's either Nicole or him (and that's not even a _contest_ ), that she can't think even a little well of him or be even the tiniest bit grateful to him for having been there - for having _stayed_ \- that she can't harbor even the smallest bit of affection for him cause it's somehow cheating and sometimes Waverly thinks that's not quite fair.

It's not Champ's fault that he couldn't be the one to make her mean those words, that he wasn't the one she needed. It's not his fault he's not _her_.

She scoots closer, dropping Nicole's hand and curling up against her, tucked tight under one strong arm, warm and safe with her head on Nicole's chest and that makes her feel so protected and _so_ turned on all at once that she can barely sit still, the temptation of those… _things_ … so very very _real_. "There was a time… a _long_ one…" she says, "when I honestly thought I was going to be with him forever." It wasn't like that was the _worst_ option, but back then it seemed like it was more like the _only_ one. "But I never… no… _we_ never talked about it. About the future or about life or about… _us_."

Waverly knows she's starting to tread on dangerous ground, that she's taking a few hesitant steps out onto the ice and she's not sure - like _at all_ \- that the Witch has frozen it all the way just yet, but she's never even come this close to something like this, something _real_ and something _lasting_ , and something ( _someone_ ) she knows will be there, _always,_ and the temptation is just too great, she can't help but take the risk.

"I never thought I'd get any of that," she says, "the whole having a future with someone stuff, something _real_ , something past a week or a month." Waverly knows - she can _feel_ it in every part of her, every 'flimsy fiber' as Gus used to say - that she's not _just_ crossing a few 'it's new' 'or 'it's early' or 'we're not there _yet_ ' lines. She's _bulldozing_ them into dust. "I _do_ want those things," she says, "those bedroom or couch or… hell… up against the wall _things_." She swears she can feel Nicole's heart racing - just a little - but that might just be her own. "But I can't help thinking about other… things."

Things, she says, like where they might live. Things like kids. Things like which of them will do the dishes and who's gonna walk the dog - or if there will even _be_ a dog - and things like weekend mornings eating cold pizza in bed and watching old movies and never once leaving the house.

"Like who'll get which side of the bed," she says. It's possibilities, she says, that's what they are, those things she can't stop thinking about. "Possibilities of conversations," she says, "and I know that's a lot of talking and there's so many less talking things we could be doing but…"

But this is what she does, this is Waverly. She talks. Even when she knows the best solution, the least risky one, is for her to just shut up (and maybe do those things) but that isn't her. She talks and she talks and she _talks_ and, when she's done talking, she talks just a little _more_ cause talking is safe and talking is easy and talking has only rarely ever gotten her into trouble, at least not until Wynonna came home (and yes, Waverly is _well_ aware of how many things in her life are now _totally_ 'until Wynonna' things.)

Nicole is one of those things, maybe the best of them, and - at the very least - she's the one of those things that's not actively trying to kill her.

Though Waverly's not sure she can say the same for her own mouth.

Nicole's not saying anything and Waverly is to silence like nature is to a vacuum and she knows if she keeps going, if she keeps rambling, sooner or later those possibilities are gonna head down roads - weddings and anniversaries and babies and play dates and kids off to college and _oh shit_ what if their kid's the next heir - and those are roads she can't travel _back_ but it's like gravity's got a hold of her tongue and she can't break free.

So she doesn't even try to. "I just can't help it," she says (meaning the imagining, not the talking, but really, it's _both_ ), "it's like every fantasy I had growing up, every daydream I ever dreamt." And there were _a lot_ of those, a lot of visions of things that could never be (or so she thought) that took up so many lonely afternoons and boring evenings and restless nights. They were abstracts, flitting images of Hallmark cards and Rockwell paintings. "It wasn't the family I'd lost," she says softly, and no, those aren't tears pricking at her eyes. They're _not_. "I didn't lose cause I'd never really had and I didn't think…" Waverly keeps her eyes - the ones that aren't tearing up - glued firmly to Nicole's legs or the couch or the wall or out the fucking _window_ , anywhere that isn't her girlfriend's face.

She's terrified to look _there_. Terrified she'll _see_ terrified staring back.

Waverly _thinks_ Nicole wants all that too, she _thinks_ that's what those _four_ little words meant, but she's so tired of _thinking_ but she's so afraid of _knowing_ cause if knowing turns out to _not_ be the same as _thinking_ -

"Two."

"What?" Waverly's mind races, like she must have missed something.

She feels Nicole's arm tighten around her (a good sign, _right_?) and the gentle nod of the other woman's head. "Two," Nicole repeats. "I want two kids. That way they'll both always have someone _and_ there will never be a middle child cause, _God_ , does _that_ suck."

Waverly lets out a breath she didn't know she was holding but Nicole doesn't seem to notice.

"And I'm pretty sure we'd have a dishwasher," Nicole says, her arm sliding up along Waverly's, her fingers tangling in the loose hanging strands of her girlfriend's hair. "But you can't get mad if I don't scrape them first, cause _dishwasher_ ," she says. "That's what it's _for_."

No scraping? That's a tough one but Waverly thinks she can manage.

"And if you _really_ want to we can get a dog," Nicole says, trying to sound all put out, like she's making _the_ sacrifice here. "But it has to like my cat and my cat has to at least sort of like it, so it's gonna have to be a girl." She thinks for a moment. "And not one of those fluffy little stick it in your purse and carry it around with you _things_ either."

A Lab. Or a Shepard. Or a Saint fucking Bernard with a jug of whiskey for Aunt Wynonna strapped round it's neck.

Waverly sits up - she _has_ to, she _has_ to see now - and she's still half expecting to see…well… something… some kind of fear or concern or worry on Nicole's face, but there's nothing there but a smile. A smile and and this… this _look._ It's familiar, not unlike the one Doc gets right before the first poker hand is dealt or the one Wynonna's always rocking right before she knows she's gonna get to punch someone in the face.

Anticipation.

"What about the bed?" Waverly asks, like it's make or break, the be all and end all. "Which side?"

Nicole just shrugs, totally non-committal. "Does it matter?" she asks. "We both know you're gonna sprawl all over the damn thing and I'm gonna wake up with you on top of me every morning."

She has a point. A _good_ one.

"And are you complaining?" Waverly asks, scooting closer, sliding back into her spot - and that's what it is, _her_ spot - on Nicole's lap.

Wrapping her arms around Waverly's waist, her hands slipping back _down_ , Nicole shakes her head. "Not even a little," she says and then she's kissing her and Waverly's thinking of _things_ again - _a lot_ of things with roaming hands and kissing lips and so much less clothing - but mostly?

She's thinking of time.

All the time. All the time they're going to have to do all those things. And then do them again.

That door's still kinda heavy. But together? They'll keep it open.

And together is good, together is helpful, together is going to be so needed once they notice, once they're done with those… things… and they're not so distracted that they don't hear the soft whir-whir-whir of Waverly's cell, vibrating its way across the kitchen counter, signaling the first call and then the next and then the next, finally, the text, the words that change it all.

 _Y: Willa's gone_


	9. Chapter 9

_**A/N: Sorry this took so long. Been working on finishing other fics and started a new story for my Kindle store. Sometimes the stories that (sort of) pay the bills gotta come first :) Let me know if it was worth the wait!**_

The phone shakes in Waverly's hand, once, twice, three times, the sporadic rush of messages trickling through as the storm clears - just for a moment, just _enough_ \- to squeeze them in before the line goes dead again. It's happened that way every few minutes for the last hour or so, ever since the first one.

 _Y: Willa's gone._

Waverly didn't react at first and Nicole wasn't sure - she's still not - if it that was out of shock or anger or sadness or… hope… (even _thinking_ that…hope that Willa and the storm and... it makes Nicole feel dirty and wrong and crazy and horrible and _wrong_ ) ( _maybe_ ) and then the second came and then the third and the fourth, long winded bursts of Wynonna being all Wynonna, sending messages that she knew would get there _eventually_ (and no, that's not her being _her_ at _all_ ) rather than dialing and redialing and redialing and redialing and you get the _idea_.

 _Y: I don't know what happened._

 _Y: We were just talking. All of us. And we started talking about the revenants and I tried to change the subject but Willa was all kill 'em, kill 'em all and I was like Dude!_

She was. She was _so…_ dude.

 _Y: And I told her, I said he couldn't be first cause we've gotta figure his plan before we let him burn, but I swore to her, I promised her I'd kill Bobo myself and then like a minute later I looked up and she was just… gone._

Nicole read them all as Waverly did, leaning over her shoulder, a comforting hand on the small of her back. Half her attention was on the words, the other half on her girlfriend, on the way Waverly reacted and she saw the flicker in her eyes at Bobo's name, saw them darken at the mention of Willa running and yeah, Waverly knew _something_ or _thought_ she knew something or was starting to _think_ something and Nicole wanted to ask, she wanted to know - even if just to share the burden she's learned that 'knowing' can be - but then Waverly set the phone on the counter and walked to the door and Nicole forgot all about burdens and started worrying about crazy instead.

Waverly's boots were by the door. Her coat was on the hook next to it and her keys were in its pocket and they jingled as Waverly brushed a hand against it, fingers closing around the sleeve.

"Waverly -"

The phone buzzed again, cutting her off and it almost made Nicole laugh - saved by the text and all - and a sense of relief washed through her, cause she had no idea what the next words out of her mouth would have been, no _clue_ how she would have said it.

 _Don't go. Don't go after her. She's not worth it._

OK, so maybe she had an _idea_.

"What does it say?" Waverly asked, her hand still on the coat, her eyes still on the boots and Nicole almost didn't dare look away, afraid her girlfriend would pull a Willa and when she'd look back up from the phone, Waverly would be gone. "Nicole? The message?"

"Right," Nicole said, and she flipped the phone over, reading aloud.

 _Y: We're going after her. Doc has some gear, some Black Badge special shit he ordered after he almost froze that time. We'll find her baby girl, I promise._

It buzzed again, shaking in her hand just as she finished the first one, like Wynonna had some ESP shit going on except Nicole knew _that_ wasn't true.

No one with ESP could be so _blind_.

 _Y: You stay put. Dolls said he thought Deputy HotStuff was on her way to see you before the shit hit the fan, so if she's there, you both stay put just in case Willa shows. I don't think she could make it that far, but I can't think of anywhere else she would go._

Waverly said nothing, but Nicole saw her grip tighten on the sleeve, just a little, just a _bit_ \- she didn't need ESP for _that_ \- and yeah, maybe Wynonna didn't know anywhere else, but Deputy HotStu… _Haught_ … had a pretty good idea that _someone_ did.

Nicole tried not to let the hope (the desperate, please please _please_ listen to your sister for _once_ kind) that she felt, trickle into her voice. "Wynonna's got a point," she said, her mind already running the odds that Waverly would see it that way, that she'd reconsider what she was so obviously still _considering_ \- she hadn't let go of that sleeve yet - and yeah, Nicole didn't have to be Doc to know those odds weren't in her favor. Maybe everyone thought of Wynonna as the intractable one, as the stubborn as a mule (and kicks as hard as one too) sister, but Nicole knew better.

Waverly _stayed_. All those years and all that _shit_ , two thirds of her family dead and another third that might as well have been and all she had was _Champ_ and she still _stayed_. Stubborn wasn't just in Waverly's wheelhouse, it was in her _blood_. And if there was was any one thing the Earp sisters shared, it was a distinct lack of 'reconsider'.

"If I was Willa," Nicole said, dropping the phone back down to the counter. "I know this is the first place I'd go."

Waverly knew _better_ and Nicole could see it, it was written all over her face and the deputy was already thinking of how quickly she could get to the handcuffs in her purse - she brought them _everywhere_ , not just everywhere Waverly was, though _that_ thought, that _other_ thought, it _had_ crossed her mind but that was like two hours and one missing and hopefully not dead (again) sister ago - when Waverly dropped the sleeve and plucked the phone from the counter. She rolled it over and over in her hand, staring down at it for a long minute before stepping back into the living room and taking up a spot by the window.

"Willa won't come here," she said, so matter of fact, so sure of herself. It was the most confident of anything Nicole had ever heard her.

"Why not?" she asked. She _had_ meant it when she said this was the first place she thought Willa would go, it wasn't just desperate lip service. "This is home."

Waverly shook her head, rubbing a sleeve across the glass where her breath had already fogged it up. "No," she said and _fuck_ , Nicole _heard_ her heart break. "It _was_."

* * *

The last time the Witch came through was three years ago.

It lasted a week, which was _bad_ but they'd had worse. It killed three, which was also bad, but this _is_ Purgatory so, you know, they'd had _worse_. It shut down the town, trapping some in their homes, stranding others in stores and churches, burying an unlucky few - those dead three - in their cars. By the seventh day, the roads and streets and sidewalks were four feet deep, the more open and less developed parts of town were under twice that much. Waverly heard a handful of people lost fingers or toes to the cold, five families lost their homes, and half a dozen more had to almost totally rebuild.

Lately, as the weather's gotten colder and the thought of a Witch coming through has danced through her mind, Waverly's wondered how Willa and the other girls she was with - the ones without a forgotten family to go back to - made it through that last one, how difficult it must have been for them, alone in the woods, lost in the dark and the cold, no warning, no comfort but each other. Sometimes, she thinks about _that_ and she makes a note, a tiny post-it in her mind, a reminder to ask Willa. It'll show interest, Waverly thinks. She'll sit across the dinner table form Willa and she'll hold her hand and she'll ask, she'll _care_.

Like Wynonna does.

You know, for _Willa_.

Sometimes, these last few weeks, Waverly thinks about it. And maybe, sometime, she'll actually ask.

"It's not really all that fair of me," she says, staring out the window, her phone silent and still in her hand and she still hasn't checked the messages and she doesn't need to. Waverly knows what they'll say, she knows it'll be more reminders to stay and more reassurances that they'll find Willa and she knows Wynonna's only saying it to reassure _herself_ cause the thought that she might have… _lost_ … Willa again, kinda _literally_ … it's just too much. "I shouldn't be jealous," she says and she knows she shouldn't. "It's not like _that_. I mean, I get it. I _stayed_ but Willa… my sister was… _she_ was _dead_. And dead trumps stayed."

There are moments, moments Waverly hasn't mentioned to Wynonna - not to _anyone_ \- when they're together, her and Willa, but Willa... she's not… _there_. And in those moments, Waverly finds herself staring at this woman who came back - and _that's_ what Willa is, _a_ woman, not a girl, at least not _anymore_ \- and when Willa catches her staring, when she drifts back into herself from wherever it is she went, there's this look, and it reminds Waverly _so_ much of the outside, the world beyond their walls, of how it looks now that the Witch has had her way.

White. Nothing _but_ white. Blank and cold and empty. A nothing on the surface that looks so peaceful, so serene.

Until you step into it.

Sometimes, when she sees those looks, Waverly can't help but wonder if maybe dead trumps coming back too. And now she can't help wondering if maybe that's why Willa ran.

* * *

The last Witch came through like a monster, like a revenant gone mad. It was all roars and bites, gnashing teeth and demonic groaning winds that slammed against buildings and tested even the oldest and the strongest, the most resilient and 'fuck you, I was here _first_ ' of trees. It fought, that Witch did. It fought the town and it fought the people and it fought against itself, surging and recoiling, feasting and starving until - like all things of such power - it burned itself out, and exhausted it's every last breath and then it roared its last, fading and crumbling and falling into nothing somewhere over the Barrens.

"It was there," Waverly says. She's still staring out the window, searching the white for a speck, a dot, a bit of dark in the bright that might ( _somehow_ ) be Willa, staggering in from the cold, her heart still hoping for what her head knows better than to expect. "It was there that night when I fell asleep and I remember hoping that the windows would hold, that I wouldn't wake up covered in glass and ice." Instead, she woke covered in Champ and she wondered, not for the first time, if the alternative might have been better.

The window is fogged with her breath again and Waverly wipes a sleeve across it, and she's sure to consciously choose the arm attached to the hand that _isn't_ attached to her phone cause she's managed _not_ to look at that for going on five minutes now - after reading the messages that were _exactly_ what she thought they'd be - and now _mostly_ accepting that it will ring when it rings and it'll say what it says and there's nothing she can do about either one. The glass clears and Waverly stares out into the nothing and that's all she sees.

Nothing.

"There's a road out there," she says, tipping a nod toward where she _thinks_ it is. "A road and your truck and that ridiculous car of Doc's out behind the barn." Nicole nods. There is… _are_ … all those things. All those things and a bitch of a storm and a… and _Willa_ … somewhere, shuffling through the snow or huddled and shivering in a dark and empty doorway or frozen by the side of the road and none of those are _good_.

But if Nicole's gonna be honest? Some are better than others. And _God,_ she hates herself for even thinking that but if she's gonna be even _more_ honest? She hates herself _more_ for thinking that she's probably not the only one who is.

The phone shakes in Waverly's hand and she looks down, her thumb ghosting over the button, a click away. It doesn't say it - it doesn't say _anything_ \- but that damn button… it might as well be _screaming_ at her, hollering out ' _Press here! Press here and see the latest and the greatest and the newest way one of your sisters has gone and fucked it all up. Again_.'

She sighs, one long slow blow slipping out from between her lips, hot against the cold glass, steaming it over again and Waverly looks up, her eyes darting back to the window, to the world just on the other side of it and it occurs to her - again, not for the _first_ time - how often this is how she's seen it.

It's like it's ( _she's_ ) always been behind that foggy and dirty glass, with an obvious layer of something - whether it was fear or determination or just a blind stubborn refusal to be just another one who leaves - between her and it, between her and everything out _there_.

"You know I've never been farther than Vernon?" she asks and Nicole doesn't answer but then Waverly doesn't really expect her to. "It's one town over," she says, pointing out the window in a vaguely easterly direction. "One town _thataway_ ," she says with a laugh and it hurts her to hear it, that short and hard and bitter sounding thing coming from _herself_ and it reminds her just so much ( _too_ much) of Wynonna and that… yeah… _that_ only makes it hurt worse.

Nicole slips off the couch and leans against the wall next to Waverly, close enough to be _there,_ but not crowding her and yeah, it's a balancing act - _again_ \- but she doesn't mind, not even a little. She's spent her life waiting for this tightrope and she'll walk it forever if she has to.

"It was just before the last Witch," Waverly says. She looks down at the phone, at that message blinking up at her over and over and over. _Press here. Click here._ "The winter that one came through," she says, "it was right after the last time Wynonna did."

* * *

Waverly's tried, over the years, not to think of it like _that_.

Wynonna and the Witch. The Witch and Wynonna. Wynonna the Witch.

There's an 'and' there. _Really_.

She's tried to separate the two in her head, to find a way to think of one without the other and she really _has_ tried, she's made an _effort_ , she's not just _saying_ she has. She _has_ , she's _tried_. But trying… well… Waverly knows better than most that trying, it doesn't always equal out to _succeeding_ and, try as she might, Waverly's just never quite… gotten there.

She knows why. Getting _there_ means getting to OK and yeah, Wynonna's back - for good, it would _seem_ \- and yeah, they're closer than ever. They're a team now, or a part of one, one with good people, people Waverly cares about (some more than others) and trusts and _that's_ new for her. And now Willa's back too (assuming, you know, she doesn't _die_ ) ( _again_ ) and Waverly thinks that maybe that's a sign, that maybe it's fate finally dealing them pocket aces instead of a quick fold or a bad beat. Maybe, she thinks, this is their chance to actually be a… _family._

And that she has to think - like _think_ \- to even come up with _that_ word? That's how she knows that it's never going to be OK, no matter how desperately she wants it to be.

But she has _tried_ , even if all that trying has never quite taken, even if all those feelings she's got are the same now as they've always been and even if, really, 'always' isn't _always_ , it's more like since the Seven or since the day Wynonna bailed or since the day she bailed again or since the last Witch, since those three years.

It might only be just that long but in Waverly's head, 'always' always seems like it's so much more… _forever_. Like it always was and it always will be and as if it was that way _then_ (when she left) and it was that way the time _before_ (also when she left) and the time before _that_ and - if Waverly's honest, at least with herself - as if it will, eventually, be that way _this_ time.

And probably the _next_ time too.

Because there _will_ be a next time. There always is. Water is wet, the sky is blue, the Witch is always just around the bend, and Waverly will let Wynonna back in.

There _are_ certain truths, you know.

Like, for instance, the certain truth that every time she thinks of it - and there are more of those times than Waverly would like there be - like _every_ time Wynonna leaves, every time she walks out a door, every time she hangs up a call, every time she says she'll 'be right back', Waverly sees it the same way. It's like a slow wipe, a _Star Wars_ scene fade (and thank you very much, Champ and your fucking Han Solo _obsession_.)

"I see the taillights," she says, tipping forward so her head rests against the cold cold glass and she swears she can see her breath as she exhales. "The last bus out of Vernon," she says, "I see them every time."

Wynonna heading back into the world - _that's_ what she sees - those taillights dissolving into the blank walls of her room or the clear sky of a Purgatory morning or the blazing white of the Witch, the blistering cold and the fading and flickering lights of the homestead. Everything she knows as _hers_ , everything that is her world, that is _her_.

Everything Wynonna left behind. Again.

"We met at the bus station," she says which, she figures, explains the taillight bit and Waverly knows she really ought to start talking and thinking in _order_ before Nicole thinks she's as fucked in the head as her sister.

Which one?

Take your pick.

"Vernon was the furthest I'd ever gone and back then… before Curtis and the curse and all _that_ … it was the closest Wynonna would come."

A forty-five minute ride away, twenty minutes past the farthest reaches of the Triangle, not a soul from Purgatory within spitting distance. And still Wynonna almost _didn't_ come.

"I remember the fights," Waverly says. She turns slightly, enough that she can see out the window from the corner of her eye, not that there's fuck all to see. "She and Gus got into these screaming matches over the phone like you wouldn't believe."

 _It's her birthday. Her eighteenth._

 _I don't give a good Goddamn where you are_ right now _, only where you are_ then _._

 _No, I don't think you should come, I don't think you should ever come anywhere near here again but_ she _does and if you've got anything of your mother left in you…_

"Gus didn't think I heard," Waverly says. "Which is kinda funny, really, cause I'm pretty sure they heard her _in_ Vernon." She feels Nicole's hand slip into hers and _God_ , how does that make it so much better and so much _worse_? "In the end, Wynonna agreed, she said we could meet at the bus station in Vernon."

"I'm surprised she even managed that," Nicole mutters and then immediately wishes she hadn't, not exactly sure where the lines are, if Wynonna's fair game (she knows _Willa_ is) or if she's still on the wrong side - the visitor's side - of that 'no one talks shit about my family but _me_ ' border.

"So was I," Waverly says,her hand never slipping free and Nicole guesses that that answers _that_. "But it was my birthday and I think the bit about… mama… I think that got to her."

Sometimes, Waverly wonders how much easier it would have made it if they'd ever had a body to bury, if mama hadn't been so much like Willa - gone but not dead, lost but not forever, not for _sure_ \- and sometimes she wonders who, _exactly_ , it is Wynonna sees every time she looks at their sister.

And sometimes she thinks she's better off not knowing.

"Gus told me not to get my hopes up," she says, turning to lean her back against the window, the cool of the glass strong enough to make her skin tingle even through her top. "She said Wynonna was reliably unreliable at best and reliably crazy at worst." Truer words… "I was looking for trouble," she said, "and maybe I was, but if I _was_ … well…"

"Wynonna was a pretty good place to start."

Waverly nods. "It didn't seem like she was going to cave," she says, "so I finally told Gus to just tell her we could meet somewhere if she didn't want to come all the way ho.. _Here_ … and that's when she came up with Vernon."

Somewhere. Somewhere was _supposed_ to be somewhere Wynonna was. Greece or Rome or California. Maine or Maryland or New fucking Jersey. Somewhere Waverly could feel new sun on her skin and new air tickling her lungs, where the dirt under her feet wouldn't have been the same dirt that had blown off the top of her father's grave, where the stares of passersbys would have had less to do with her name and everything to do with _her_.

Waverly would have taken _anywhere_. She would have settled for a night in a hotel by the border with room service pancakes and a cheap bottle of wine. She would have been _thrilled_ with a chain restaurant - the kind she saw ads for online, one of the ones with a day of the week in the name, maybe - with waitresses in _real_ uniforms (the kind that don't involve too much midriff and shorts that squeeze your ass and not in the way she likes) who came to your table and sang _Happy Birthday_ while they served you a piece of cake so rich and decadent you'd need cholesterol meds after a _bite_.

What she _got_ was the Greyhound station in Vernon and a watered down Starbucks Moccachino served alongside an oversized chocolate chip cookie.

"It had a match for a candle," she says, "so that was something."

It _did_. One extra large match - Waverly didn't even know they made them in _sizes_ \- and she waited too long to blow it out. The flame burned too low and scorched a chip or two, melting chocolate (or what passed for it on a bus station cookie) into some hardened _blah_ and she had to take a plastic spork from the pretzel place and scrape it off.

Still… best cookie ever.

"It lasted an hour or so," Waverly says, "my little… party." Her phone buzzes in her hand again and she glances at it for a moment before stuffing it into her pocket. "An hour and ten minutes, right up until the last bus was loaded and fueled and ready to roll."

And Wynonna with it.

She was headed out again and Waverly had never had any illusions that she _wouldn't_ be, off into the world, on to her next flight, her next stop, her next… _somewhere_.

"I waited," she says, pulling her hand free from Nicole's and wrapping her arms around herself, a shiver slipping through her. "I waited every single one of those seventy minutes, wondering when… _if_ … she'd ever say it."

 _Come with me_.

For the longest time - her _life_ \- those were the three little words Waverly so longed to hear. She had Champ for love (or something like it) and she had Gus and Curtis for family and she had Shorty for… being Shorty. But Wynonna… and those words… _God_ how she'd wanted to hear them, how she wanted to _have_ that, even for a moment.

"She never did," Waverly says, though she suspects Nicole already knew that. "And that was just as well, _really_ , cause I would have _had_ to shoot her down anyway."

Of course she would have. _She_ couldn't just leave. Not her home and her job and her home and her boyfriend and Curtis and her books and her home and her classes and _that_ was _her_ curse cause _she_ couldn't just leave her _home_.

She couldn't just go.

The phone buzzes again in her pocket and Waverly knows she should look, it might actually be important. They might have found Willa or they might have lost her or they might have saved her or they might they might they… _might_ …

They might. But she _can't_.

"I would have said no," Waverly says and she doesn't know if Nicole believes her and… hell… she doesn't even know if she believes herself. "I _would_ have," she says, tugging the phone free, tossing it on the couch as she walks by, headed for the bedroom instead of the door. "Still," she says. "It wouldn't have sucked to be asked."


End file.
